Links to recent articles about the artist:

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/09/24/sunday_am/doc4329fce60d439971404885.txt

http://www.dailynebraskan.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/22/400f4103aa9fe

http://www.cgcvt.org/programs/ccg/ccg-staff.shtml

http://www.riverfestival.com/2001/prefest.cfm

http://www.artscene.org/about_us/projects/arts_festival/?index_item=9573&db_item=listitem

http://www.smokyhillmuseum.org/Pages/press.html#glass

http://www.universityplaceart.com/classes/class05fall.pdf

In Lincoln's Premier Lifesyle Magazine

Story by Anne Pagel, photos by John Nollendorfs

Kornbluh’s passion for culture and history has shaped his life. Before their children were born, he and his wife, Deni, traveled the world, journeying across China, over the Himalayas and through Pakistan.

Pull Quotes: Although the Kornbluhs will return to Vermont in June, the artist says the year in Lincoln has exceeded their dreams. They have fulfilled their objective of creating an opportunity to be near Deni’s large Omaha and Lincoln family.

“I can’t imagine a better life than being an artist,” he says. “I love to arrive in the morning, turn on the radio, do what I want all day long, then have people ooh and aah. For me, this is a joyful existence.”

Auditing one of Marc Kornbluh’s classes is like learning a foreign tongue.

Lamp work. Fused glass. Slumped glass. Dichroic glass. Stringers. Pulled dots. Encasing. Latticino. The terms are part of the language of glassmaking on a small scale.

Students who take a class from the Burlington, Vt. glass artist who is living temporarily in Lincoln don’t just learn to make lamp-work beads, they learn to make magic.

Today, Lincolnites Bonnie Sittig and Carol Kmoch are taking a six-hour workshop. Winter sun floods the sparse studio, warming it and casting a soft, even light over the chest-high workbench, on which there is a one-cubic-foot annealer, an oven for tempering newly formed glass, a box of colored glass rods and an oxygen propane torch.

Sittig steps to the workbench, puts on safety glasses, secures a one-inch length of copper tubing on an instrument that looks like oversized tweezers, and slowly positions the tubing in the flame. Kornbluh helps her melt a small glob of glass onto the tubing, calmly talking her through the process. He shows her how to vary the liquidity of the glass by bringing it into or away from the fire, constantly turning so that the glass becomes round and regular, forming a perfect bead. He coaches her on techniques for applying rods of glass the size of angel-hair pasta, called stringer, to add decorative dots and lines, and on how she can remove the bead from the flame, leaving a raised design, or how she can continue to turn her bead so that the motif sinks into the glass, leaving a smooth, round form.

Next, the two students will experiment with applying patterns of criss-crossed lines, or latticino. They will learn to encase a bead in an additional coating of clear glass, giving it a mysterious preciousness. Throughout the workshop, Kornbluh continues to coach, keeping his students attentive, confidant and moving.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” says Kornbluh. “I think it’s good to pass on what I’ve learned. I believe when you share what you know, it comes back to you.”

Kornbluh says it’s particularly satisfying to teach lampworking because within one class, students can make beads with dots and lines that they can incorporate into their own original jewelry.

He will teach a single student or a group, so long as the applicants are 18 or older (16 or 17, if accompanied by a parent). While most workshops involve four, three-hour sessions, Kornbluh is flexible about scheduling and says even a single half-day workshop can be a great learning experience.

“Taking the workshop is a great step,” he says. “You’ll never again wonder how glass is made. My students learn how colors are overlaid, how patterns are made, how glass is formed. They learn the difference in slumped, or kiln-formed glass; fused glass, shaped with a torch, and cast glass, made with a mold.”

While Kornbluh obviously relishes teaching, he takes equal joy in his own work. Before entering his workspace at the back of the Burkholder Project, visitors pass through a gallery in which dozens of the artist’s glassworks are on display. There are bowls filled with exquisite, multicolored beads and a number of wall pieces, mostly mirrors, framed in iridescent dichroic glass with decorative reliefs. There are several pieces of Precious Metal Clay (PMC), clay in which particles of gold or silver are suspended. Kornbluh is writing an article for the July or August issue of Lapidary Journal outlining his step-by-step process for making PMC beads with a torch. He says bead makers typically shape the material into beads and fire them in a kiln.

Kornbluh likes the marketing process and sells three-fourths of his work through direct sales from his studio, art shows and festivals.

“There is a learning curve to marketing,” he says. “Selling was especially difficult for me. It is necessary to learn the art of selling as well as making art. If you don’t have both, you can’t succeed. I did a lot of reading, studying and experimenting.”

The artist will lecture on “The Business of Art” this spring at Union College. He says he is pleased to have an opportunity to share what he has learned about getting into shows, effective displays and booth etiquette, but finds it particularly rewarding to tell students that art can be a financially feasible, even lucrative, career.

Much of the work that Kornbluh sells through galleries and museums is from a line of Judaic items that includes menorahs, mezuzahs to attach to doorposts of homes, and Yahrzeits, small oil lamps that commemorate the anniversary of a loved one’s death. These works are sold through the Jewish Museum and the Center for Jewish History in New York City and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Kornbluh says that while he isn’t very religious, he values his heritage and appreciates having had the opportunity to learn more about Judaism.

“I love that I have a connection to something ancient,” he says. “It’s fascinating to me that many of the Jews of Spain who were cast out by Isabel and Ferdinand were artisans. The term Murano, the name of the Venetian isle where glass has been made for centuries, makes reference to Jews who have been converted to Catholicism.”

Kornbluh’s passion for culture and history has shaped his life. Before their children were born, he and his wife, Deni, traveled the world. He says they journeyed across China, over the Himalayas and through Pakistan. They even lived with a stone-aged Sumatran tribe.

“These people were all artists,” Kornbluh says. “Every object they made was functional, but beautiful. A man would weave a basket around a chicken he was about to take to another village. It was a spontaneous act, a necessity, but beauty would be a natural, important part of it.”

Kornbluh found it ironic that these people are viewed as primitive and says it made him want to create his life anew.

“When you’ve seen so many models for living, the standard of the house, the cars, the job seems a bland choice,” he says.

After returning to Burlington, the couple’s daughter, Hana, now 14, and son, Ari, now 11, were born. Marc opened a café and bakery called The Olive Branch that specialized in innovative, Mediterranean-inspired baked goods and pizzas, one incorporating Gorgonzola, spinach and walnuts, another based on Indian Vindaloo. After five years, he sold the business.

“I thought it was wonderful to be able to build something and sell it to someone who wanted to buy it,” says Kornbluh. “It gave me time at home with my kids and it gave me the ability to start doing art.”

Meanwhile, Deni became more and more involved with the children’s school, a 30-year-old parent cooperative called The Schoolhouse. She eventually became its chief administrator. The school required parents to teach short courses, help shape curricula, serve as board members and hire teachers. The Kornbluhs put their theater degrees from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to work in the form of annual theatrical productions that involved 60 children.

“To this day, my daughter says The Schoolhouse gave her a love of learning,” says Kornbluh. “They’re great students. Hana goes to Irving Middle School and Ari goes to Beattie.”

Although the Kornbluhs will return to Vermont in June, the artist says the year in Lincoln has exceeded their dreams. They have fulfilled their objective of creating an opportunity to be near Deni’s large Omaha and Lincoln family.

“We have always loved Lincoln,” says Kornbluh. “It has a lot in common with Burlington. But our real reason for coming was for the children to get to know their grandfather, their aunts and uncles and their cousins.”

It won’t be easy to leave Lincoln. Kornbluh says his students and the interaction with other artists at the Burkholder Project have been great. But, then, there is the lively East Coast art show season that begins in July and goes through October, and Kornbluh will be a glass artist wherever he resides.

“I can’t imagine a better life than being an artist,” he says. “I love to arrive in the morning, turn on the radio, do what I want all day long, then have people ooh and aah. For me, this is a joyful existence.”