art – Katie Kearns

My first day of glass-blowing class

a woman in a t-shirt seated at a bench pulling on a red rod of hot glass. A man in a baseball hat and Holiday World t-shirt is standing next to her. There are tools and benches in the background and two other people behind them.

Everything was loud. The flames were loud, the light was loud, the heat was loud. Strangely, with all that sensory input, there was no differentiation to give me information about changes in my environment. I couldn’t hear anything else but those jets. I couldn’t see the surface of the glass. I couldn’t feel anything but searing heat on my skin. I had to draw upon internalized imaginings of the movements I had seen Ben make. I had to “feel” my way through it.