#CAT BLOWN AWAY WINDOWS#

The rainbow felt a little defiant and unifying at the same time, racking up millions of TikTok views and totally changing my year. The first order in June was for 50 and by the end of the year, she had made almost 600.īurns says: “They just spoke to everyone that need for some color, joy, and unity. After a few inceptions, Burns landed on the right rainbow for the 2020 Unity Pumpkin. Though 2020 began with mass cancellations of all of her scheduled work, The Shops presented the artist with the idea of taking a color concept she had developed earlier and reworking it to fit the Pumpkin of the Year. Making work at The CMoG Studio, Burns sells a lot of her glass at The Museum Shops. A full-time glassblower since 2009, the artist has travelled the world, working for many years with CMoG’s Hot Glass Show at Sea team. She says: “I got paid to learn first-hand from people at the top of their field, and I could not be more grateful for the lessons the Museum has taught me.”Īside from making her own work, Burns loves to teach and has helped teach classes all over the country in places like Pittsburgh, Penland, Salem, Corning, Pilchuck, and Snow Farm.

She subsequently worked as a full-time assistant to other glass artists in the Philadelphia area and at The Studio at CMoG, where she learned from the constant stream of master glassblowers. For the past few years, retinopathy has plagued her, forcing a reevaluation of exposing the eyes to melting glass.Īs a production glassblower Burns put herself through school, earning her associate degrees in Glass Fine Art and Glass Craft and Design from Salem Community College, Carneys Point, New Jersey. Some of Burns’ glasswork centers around her failing eyesight and how this impacts her world as a maker. She has needed glasses since age two for extreme nearsightedness, and her mother was almost completely blind by age 40, so losing her vision was something the artist understood as a possibility all along. By destigmatizing personal demons, her work explores what it means to “go a little crazy.” The work explores the delicate strength of glass as a final object, as well as its use as a personally therapeutic tool. She cultivates her work very slowly and uses it as a visual diary, creating audacious imagery as a way of communicating and synthesizing the often perplexing, manic experience of living with depression. As runner-up of the competition, she scrambles to keep up with the overwhelming interest of the general public in supporting her art through acquisition.Ī defiant artist who uses flamboyant, sarcastic humor to illustrate her internal narrative, Burns touched the Blown Away 2 audience with her honesty and vulnerability.

#CAT BLOWN AWAY WINDOWS#

Whether creating her signature Nesting Bowls, a dazzling murrine sculpture Windows of Truth, or an unforgettable glass fashion statement Forbidden Twizzlers, Cat Burns captured viewers’ hearts and minds as a contestant on Blown Away 2 – Netflix’s glassblowing competition show produced by marblemedia with the support of The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). Glass Artists of Colorado and the Morgan Adams Project.CMOG’s 10 Ways to Digitally Experience Glass.LaceFace and Southern Oregon Glass Community Relief.I think every person that says 'this is the best experience of my life,' you know in the reviews, I'm like oh my god, it's such an honor to hear that. It's such an honor to have the opportunity to share it with them. That's the most rewarding part, is that so many people are happy from experiencing the glass making process. In an interview with Parkbench, she said: 'I think it's just always rewarding because it never gets old that so many people enjoy it. The studio has also received a lot of exposure through local news channels, notably National Geographic, which has helped speed things up.įor Baker, the best part is being able to share her love of glass-blowing with the world.

To begin with, they first launched on Groupon to do live demonstrations, however, over the years, the studio has received so much traction that it is usually at capacity. After working for 16 years in the glass industry, in June 2013, the Blown Away contestant took her first steps toward fulfilling her dream of becoming an independent glass artist and opening her own studio, the Hollywood Hot Glass, in South Florida.

Cat blown away