In July 2007, Doug MacCash, an arts writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote, “Eddie and Angela Bernard don’t make the glass art; they make the equipment that makes the glass art. Unfortunately, beginning in 2008, they’ll make it in Star, N.C., instead of Mid-City, New Orleans.”
New Orleans’ loss is Montgomery County’s gain. The Bernards and the three young men who work with them at Wet Dog Glass at STARWorks have brought skilled hands and an infectious enthusiasm to Star.
Eddie Bernard, 34, is a native of Louisiana and a graduate of the School of Fine Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He grew up working around his mother’s ceramics studio and a glass artist who shared her space. “When I went to school to study art glass, I realized people needed furnaces and equipment,” he says of the company he started in New Orleans 11 years ago to design and manufacture that equipment. “After I started building and repairing glass stuff at school, I really got into the technology of it, everything from how the doors open and what kind of brick to use, to the business end of it.”
Starting out on what he calls “a serious shoe string,” he worked in his garage and driveway, sometimes in the pouring rain. One of his first furnaces went to the art department at Tulane University.
Since then, Wet Dog Glass has consulted with and built equipment for institutions and studios all over the United States, as well as overseas in such far flung places as Scotland, Japan and Australia.
The furnaces and control equipment are expensive. A mid-size furnace runs around $12,000 including shipping, for which they build their own specially designed pallets. “There’s several thousand dollars worth of safety equipment and instrumentation and a lot of handwork,” Bernard explains. The special bricks, which withstand up to 3,000 degrees, cost $4 each. Wet Dog’s equipment is UL certified and complies with the National Fire Protection Agency Association.
After the Wet Dog workshop was flooded in Hurricane Katrina, they tried to stick it out but eventually found it too expensive for insurance and too difficult to attract the skilled employees and young artists who are essential to their businesses. The glass art studio they started was turned into the nonprofit New Orleans Creative Glass Institute and remains in that city. Eddie still serves on the board of directors.
Eddie was familiar with North Carolina, having taught at the Penland School of Crafts in the N.C. mountains, so when STARWorks offered them space at a low rent though a Community Development Block Grant, Wet Dog moved to Star in March.
Since then, in addition to building glass furnaces and controls, they’ve also helped refurbish the space for the 7,000-square-foot workshop and a large glass and metal studio they hope to have ready in September. They’ve filled in concrete floor trenches left from old textile equipment, painted, moved lights, helped put in skylights and plenty of other work around the building. “If you want it done, you have to use your spare time,” Bernard says.
He and Angela have numerous contacts in the world of glass art through their years of teaching and working in the field. “We expect to attract more artists; we have a lot of friends who need more affordable space to work in,” Bernard says, adding that he expects word will spread and that Star could easily become another Penland, with an emphasis on art glass, metal sculpture and multimedia work. “It will be the kind of place where artists can see a project through from start to finish,” Bernard says.
Everyone at Wet Dog lives in or around the Star area and likes it. “The isolation and the small town are good for many in the creative process. They’re better able to concentrate with fewer distractions,” says Bernard.
The three young men working at Wet Dog with the Bernards are artists as well. Mac Metz, 31, is a native of Raleigh and worked with Wet Dog in New Orleans, post Katrina. Evan Morgan, 24, is from Hawaii and has a background in ceramics, metal sculpting and wood crafting. Stephen Protheroe, 26, is from Emporia, Kan. He calls himself a “part-time artist,” more interested in the engineering and technology side of the field.
All of them share Bernard’s zeal for improving the technological side of glass art. They talk about the increases in fuel costs for the furnaces and how, like so many other things, more utilitarian glass making is going overseas.
“We’re trying to encourage people to stay in business by focusing on art glass,” Bernard says.
“To toot Eddie’s horn, he’s a pioneer in making this more affordable,” adds Metz.
“It’s all still interesting to me, learning new information to make it better. We’re constantly trying to find ways to do it better and ways to reduce our costs and keep the quality while improving efficiency,” Bernard says.
Everyone at Wet Dog is also interested in finding ways to make their equipment and glass art greener and more environmentally friendly. Protheroe talks about an East Coast tour of studios and schools later this year to work with them on reducing costs.
“The field has to focus on energy efficiency and better ways to run the studios,” he says. They’re working with fellow STARWorks entrepreneurs at Comfort South HVAC, experimenting on ways to use furnace heat to heat space and water, and are looking at a way to collect rain water from the building roof.
They’re also interested in supporting the local economy, which is a big part of what Central Park N.C. and STARWorks is all about. K&M Machine in Biscoe, DESCO, in Albemarle, and vendors from Sanford, Asheboro and Rockingham are providing many of the items and services they need.
“Whatever we can get around here, we will, and it’s good because we can get regular deliveries,” Bernard says. Adds Morgan, “We’ve been using some of the local hardware stores for nuts and bolts when we go out for tacos for lunch.”
As things progress, the Bernards would also like to put more people to work. “We’d like to create a glass product line from recycled glass that could employ some people,” Eddie says. “We’ve talked to some craft galleries in Southern Pines and Charlotte about working with us to carry molded glass items like paperweights and coasters.” It would require training in grinding, polishing and packaging glass items.
The group at Wet Dog has come from across the country to Star and clearly enjoy working together. The banter flows constantly and the enthusiasm for what they do is deep. Metz calls Angela Bernard “the glue that holds us all together.”
“There’s never a dull moment,” says Protheroe. “It’s not a job, it’s a way of life,” adds Morgan.
They also have a strong feeling for the history of the town and the building where they do their work. Hanging in the workshop is a small metal sign used as a kick plate on the bottom of a door they were repainting. Fancy script letters beneath a gold crown are a reminder that their workshop was once home to Russell Socks.
