By: Isaiah S. Showell, Follow South Jersey Multimedia Journalist/’What’s Good’ Host
CARNEY’S POINT, N.J. — The Glassblowing veteran Paul Stankard is celebrated at Salem Community College as part of the International Flameworking Conference, and film maker Dan Collins is the creator of the documentary Paul Stankard Flower & Flame. Among the attendees that night were glass blowers Mathieu Grodet and Susie Silbert.
Silbert shared her thoughts on core forming and like many glassblowers, she wondered how glassblowers from the past were able to get glass to hold things inside and on the core. I asked her a few questions about it after she finished her speech addressing the room.
Q: What is Core Forming?
A: It’s one of the very first ways people made vessels in glass, from clay or mud or dung on the end of a rod in the shape of a vessel they wanted to make and that is what becomes the core.
Q: Explain what you mean when you say learning from the past by thinking through the lenses of the present.
A: When it’s so hard to imagine what people in the past were thinking and approached things; we’re always looking through our present moment at the past, I’m so bad at directions; I was made for GPS, what if I had to look at a map to get here tonight but it’s almost impossible to imagine a world without it; all these people trying to figure out how these ancient glassworkers did their thing they were thinking through the lens of the present.
Q: As an artist are you ever misunderstood? Does it ever discourage you?
A: I think I feel misunderstood a lot of the time. I have a really good community. I have a bunch of people that I talk to and they help reflect back who I am to me, they get it but not everyone gets it. The real thing I try to do in my talks is not about the subject matter of the talk at all really, I do not care if anybody understands the academic back and forth trying to understand the technology, what I care about is that the person that I am touches the person that you are, that we all together in the space become a little more human, if there’s anything I can do to contribute in any small way to someone becoming more of who they are, that is what I want to be a part of.
After the documentary was shown in the Davidow Hall, Paul Stankard answered questions from the audience and took pictures with people while others waited to ask more questions pertaining to his legacy in glassblowing. The night was definitely What’s Good in South Jersey this week!
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