Art students help struggling glass company
By Cara Miller
Last summer, three AU glass majors had the opportunity to design three new lines of tableware for a family-owned glass company in West Virginia. Blenko Glass has a long tradition of creating high-quality glass and is one of the few companies remaining that makes its glass by hand. It also has a friendly connection with Anderson University’s art department as several students and alumni have done work for the company.
“We’ve had five students do internships there before this project,” said Arlon Bayliss, professor of art at Anderson University. “One alum was a designer there for seven years. So, when Blenko needed a new designer, they asked if I knew of any graduate or if I would be prepared to do it myself. I said I had an idea for a design team.”
Bayliss enlisted the support of three glass majors who were already working with him on a different glass project for the Marion County Public Library. Juniors Lauren Shirer and Danielle Nichelson and senior Cara Camp, along with Ball State sculpting Professor Mary Jo Anderson formed the Bayliss design team, focused on creating three new lines of tableware for the company in hopes of boosting sales.
Working mostly in the art department on campus, the team would brainstorm ideas and then send Blenko several designs, which the factory workers would use to create molds. The team would then travel to Blenko to review the prototypes, which they’d bring home in order to make revisions and send new designs.
“We visited the company a lot last spring,” recalled Nichelson. “Because we were brought in to give the company a boost and bring in revenue, it was important for us to establish good relationships with the people there and to be sensitive to what was going on.”
“It was so completely different than what we’d been doing,” said Shirer. “We’d just had our first semester of glass, which is just learning techniques. And then second semester we were starting to get a little more comfortable with this medium and starting to experiment with different ideas. But working for Blenko, we weren’t just designing things for ourselves. We had to think about what this specific company could make with their glass, what skills their workers had or didn’t have, whether a certain design could be mass-produced by those workers, and if it was actually marketable. It was overwhelming, to say the least.”
After several trips to West Virginia, where the students observed the glass factory in action and fostered relationships with the workers, they succeeded in creating three new lines — the Strata, with its cobweb design; the Victoria, which has a more elegant feel; and the Bravo, which is retro in style and color. Ultimately, their work has had a very positive impact on the company.
“Blenko is now headed toward making a profit,” Bayliss said. “The job we had to do was a real success, and our students were actively involved in rescuing a company that is part of American history. There are no other glass programs in the country interested in doing this kind of work. That makes us unique.
“We had a target for what we wanted to accomplish, and we exceeded our goals,” he continued. “The students even received a bonus on top of being paid for the internship.”
However, more important to the students than money were the relationships they formed and the lessons they will take with them into the future.
“For me, I think the interaction with people was important,” says Nichelson. “It was also beneficial to get to see the factory side of things versus doing work as an individual. We had meetings with secretaries and people who were in charge of finances and different management, and it’s a lot to think about — things we don’t normally think about here, where we focus on making our own pieces. It was very helpful.”
“One of the things I learned in working for Blenko is how much I like working for other people, and just the fact that I like working with glass,” said Shirer. “While the design aspect was fun, I really like working with my hands and even getting burnt. I’d like to be able to work for someone someday while still being my own artist. Like any other job, really, it’s important to have community and to be able to trust the people you work with.”
