We talked to sculptural glass artist Glass By Boots (Gina "Boots" Gaffner) about the path that led her to become such a unique and iconic glassblower. When she was in high school, Boots had worked at a glass bead shop where she got some experience working with soft glass, but this was short-lived and after leaving that job she wouldn't touch a torch again for a few years. Fast-forward to the age of 25 and Boots was waiting tables and searching for a new and more permanent career path. In her search, Boots found a Craigslist ad looking for lampworkers, and she answered the ad and started as an apprentice for a local glassblower making spoons and one-hitters. This gave Boots a chance to cut her teeth on borosilicate glass torch work, and from that point onwards she was hooked on glassblowing and knew that she wanted to pursue it as a permanent career.
Eventually, Glass By Boots would open her own studio where she would work for nearly six years before taking a position at a studio called St. Elmo's Fire in Austin, Texas. During the transitional period when Boots was quitting her day job and beginning to pursue glassblowing full-time, she stumbled onto an idea that would lead her to her signature style. She was on the mend following an automotive accident, and when she was laid up she found herself watching a lot of television. One day she was watching a cooking show and was suddenly inspired to make food items from glass. This idea continued to grow as she thought about it more. At first she made a carrot, and after the carrot was sculpted to her satisfaction she made more, and more, and soon she started making other items: apples, oranges, bananas, and any other produce that captured her fancy.
Now, Glass By Boots works solo from her own garage. She is known almost exclusively for her sculptural produce glass, artistic and functional, and she puts all of her skill and expertise into making these pieces. Glass By Boots spends hours studying the anatomy of her subjects, and is constantly pushing herself to make her work as perfect as it can possibly be. A lot of detail goes into the tiniest features on her glass produce, but she requires perfection even from these small details, so she will spend a lot of time working out how to do features like seeds; for example, the technique that she uses to make seeds on a strawberry will not translate to making the seeds of a banana, and vice versa. Each subject is unique and she approaches each new subject knowing that it will require its own special attention to detail.
Focusing on a narrow theme like produce gave Glass By Boots the drive to push her skills as a glassblower. She was never interested in making her pieces realistic until she settled on the produce theme, and when she had a clear theme for her subjects she was able to focus on the individual features of each fruit or vegetable, pushing herself to make them as realistic as possible while also trying to retain the simplistic aspects that make each fruit or vegetable iconic. In striving for simplistic realism she often finds that clip art is a useful reference when starting a new piece, since clip art reduces its subjects to their most simple, iconic forms.
For the last year Glass By Boots has worked almost exclusively on banana-themed pieces after a friend suggested that she should focus on one specific type of produce for an extended period. Boots believes that as an artist one should always identify their weaknesses and then work on those specific weak points first. One of Boots' favorite series to work on is her 'window series', comprised of pieces of glass produce that have clear glass windows on one side so that the user can see the interior anatomy of the fruit or vegetable. In the future Glass By Boots intends to work on more 'window series' pieces and to create more unique character pieces like her piece entitled "Johnny Texas Bananas" (pictured below). Glass By Boots is also regularly making trophies for an organization that gives awards to farmers and gardeners for growing giant produce, an aspect of her career from which she derives a lot of enjoyment. You can check out Glass By Boots' amazing work over on her Instagram page. (@glassbyboots)
