Artisan
Through the Glass
Tim Flagg's art intertwines artistry and education
By Jen Faul
Photography by Dick Bloom
Tim Flagg’s glass studio looks like any other craftsman’s garage—until he turns on the lights. Artfully shaped neon signs light the workspace with luminous, multi-colored light. Flagg is a glass artist, working in stained glass, neon and fused glass.
“The technical term for this art form is ‘glass bending,’” Flagg says of neon as he lights a propane heating element called a crossfire. The crossfire looks like two tiny blowtorches, welded to face each other to focus their heat on a five-inch space. Flagg pulls a length of glass tubing from under his workbench and marks off about two inches near the middle of the pipe. “These marks on the glass will tell me how far I need to heat the glass,” Flagg says. He places the glass between the heating elements of the crossfire and begins heating the glass, constantly moving the pipe over the two-inch mark and carefully watching the glass for a sign of it melting.
“I keep ‘gathering’ the glass, or gently pushing the ends of the glass pipe towards the center, to get more glass in one spot. This will help prevent the heated glass from thinning out and give me more glass to work with when I bend it,” Flagg says.
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