Wolf Art Glass is composed of Austin crafters Dean and Carrie Wolf. Dean became completely enamored with hot glass during his first glassblowing lesson with 20 year glass craftsman and teacher Aaron Gross of Austin Art Glass. After 10 months of apprenticeship with Aaron and some handed down equipment, Dean built a small hot shop to blow glass at his home in South Austin.
Blowing art glass with minimal consumption of power resources is an important objective of Dean’s. In the studio setup at Wolf Art Glass, a single glory hole is used for melting the glass batch, reheating the piece, and warming the pipes which circumvents the need for 2 pieces of powered equipment: the furnace & pipe warmer. Without using a furnace allows the shop to not use any power resources when we are not blowing. Each homemade clay crucible full of glass blown is charged/melted for less than an hour (hence the small bubbles in our pieces) and not for days as is common. The small batch approach allows us to experiment with different glass types, including recycled bottle glass.
We choose to recycle Topo Chico bottles due to the lack of paper & glue labels, beautiful seafoam green color, and our addiction to the bubbly mineral water (local sourcing!). It has proven itself to be a rewarding and challenging glass to blow and manipulate as it cools and hardens rapidly, a quality favored in a machine-produced bottling facility. Dean also enjoys reverse-engineering bottles by sticking them to the blowpipe and using them as the base bubble to craft into forms the bottles were never intended to be in. Another source of glass we use is new clear art glass formulated for blowing. Purchased in pre-charged nugget form (like glass ice cubes), it melts down quickly in the crucible.
“My passion for hot glass grows every time I sit at the bench. I aspire to craft unique objects that are appreciated by glass lovers and curious in nature to others.”
– Dean Wolf
Thank you for your interest in Wolf Art Glass!
