[Nick] Throw sand, lime and soda into a 2,000 degree Fahrenheit furnace,
and you get liquid glass.
Skilled glassblowers gather the molten mixture using hollow pipes.
And when they blow,
glass inflates to form a bubble to shape and sculpt.
The tools and techniques date back to Roman times, but we're about to
turn up the heat.
We're back at North America's largest hot shop
to watch ten exceptional artists…
[blowing]
…fight fire with fire.
And now the fun begins.
[dramatic string music playing]
Go big or go home.
[Nick] And with great risk…
-Oh, God. -Rest on the bench. Rest on the bench!
-I always come out swinging. -…comes great reward.
-Yeah, baby! -[Minhi] Whoo!
[Nick] If they can survive our fiery competition,
they'll win a life-changing prize package
that will establish them around the globe as Best in Glass.
I'm Nick Uhas, and this…
is Blown Away.
[sizzling, hissing]
[upbeat string music playing]
Glassblowers, welcome back to the hot shop.
-Thanks. -Yeah.
I just don't know what to expect, and that's kind of scary.
I'm not worried but my mind's just racing. I'm like, "Okay, what are we gonna do?"
Wrath, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, pride.
We want you to create an original piece of art
using one of the so-called seven deadly sins.
Oh.
John Moran, because you won Best in Blow for the last challenge,
you get first pick.
I'm gonna go with greed.
-Greedy. -Yes.
[both chuckle]
-Are you happy with your choice? -Yeah, I'm very happy with the choice.
Great. So, you won't mind choosing for everyone else.
-[pleasant music playing] -[chuckling]
-[Minhi] Oh, boy. -[chuckles] Okay.
[groans] It's total crap!
[laughs]
Who gets pride?
-Brenna? Pride? -Mm. Thanks. I like it.
Thankfully, I got pride.
Am I slouching too much?
Who are you giving wrath to?
Dan. Sorry, buddy, I'm gonna have to go with wrath.
-I think it's a good one for you. [laughs] -I'll take it.
The wrath of Dan.
Who are you giving gluttony to?
Best served for Grace here.
-So, uh, it's all yours. -Ooh!
J'adore.
What about lust?
That's all you, Minhi.
-Ooh! -[chuckles]
I love that.
Envy will go to Mr. Sharvin here.
All right.
So, I guess that leaves Trenton with sloth.
Great. Sounds fitting.
-[laughs] -[Brenna] Good luck.
Helping Katherine evaluate your work today is…
[cymbal roll]
Donna Davies.
Oh, nice.
[Nick] Not only is Donna the deputy director
of the legendary Pilchuck Glass School,
she's also an art historian.
I'm really excited to hear Donna Davies critique my work.
Back in the 4th century,
the seven deadly sins drew a hard line between vice and virtue,
sinner and saint.
But for this challenge,
don't feel it has to be so black and white.
[Katherine] We're not looking for archaic values.
We want you to take a more contemporary and personal take.
You'll have four hours to design, create and present an original piece of art.
[Katherine] You'll be evaluated on design, concept and technical skill.
And, just to make things a little bit more interesting,
I'd like to offer the winner of this challenge
a residency at Pilchuck Glass School.
-[Grace] Amazing. -[Trenton] Yeah, this is awesome.
This is a huge prize.
Pilchuck is a phenomenal, incredible glass school.
I hope I win this.
In the 20 years I've been blowing glass,
I'm embarrassed to say I've never been to Pilchuck.
Artists, your four hours starts now.
[dramatic string music playing]
[Trenton] So, uh, John Moran gave me sloth.
Maybe John thinks I'm lazy.
I think he's throwing shots out there, I don't know.
I thought it'd be kind of funny to actually make a lazy, cartoony sloth,
slouching on a couch.
So, part of being sloth is not only being lazy,
it's attributed to, like, ignorance, to knowledge,
so, you know, some books maybe stacked underneath the couch, holding it up.
He's got, like, a remote control in one hand.
Definitely gonna be sculptural-heavy.
I was given pride.
I'm inspired by the LGBTQ community.
I'm going to make a vessel.
And then I'll be adding the spectrum of the rainbow
and all seven marbles along the side.
[music fades]
I'm gonna be making a sneaker
that's gonna be placed on top of kind of a cushy pillow.
The reason I chose the sneaker
is because sweatshops reference this idea of greed.
I'm not a really greedy person, but I really want to win.
[Dan] My good friend John Moran assigned me wrath.
So I've got a book with a grapevine coming out of it.
Kind of based on the Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath.
So when I think about gluttony,
one of the things that came to mind was ASMR.
So, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response.
These Korean videos called Mukbang,
they elaborate on the sounds of indulgence.
Like sand being carved out
to eating something really slowly or really crunchy.
[crunching loudly]
[crunching continues]
[whispers] This is ASMR.
You know, I hope that the sound will translate visually.
[Minhi] I want to portray lust with a flower.
People will offer a flower when they're falling in love with someone.
Rather than it be your everyday flower,
it's going to be sort of this ominous creature.
My piece is about lust disguising itself as love.
[John S] It is gonna be a little village
with these mounds and these houses, kind of, on top of them
looking up at each other, wanting what everyone else has.
It's gonna be a challenge.
It's hard to captivate something so complex as envy.
[upbeat orchestral music playing]
[in sing-song] Cool. Let's do it.
[Trenton] Whoa-ho! Watch out!
What I don't love is the rusty pipes. Like, I'm really kind of a clean freak.
Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow. There we go. A little lighter now.
-[sizzling] -[pleasant string music playing]
[Minhi] It's getting hot. You gotta dance through it.
[Trenton] It's all in the hips.
[laughs]
[John M] My sin is greed.
Blow really lightly, please.
I wanted to, kind of, showcase a contemporary fairy tale,
so I'm making a kind of rethought version of the glass slipper.
The sneaker will be made of, kind of, a flesh tone.
I am looking for two back-to-back wins.
Actually, I'm looking for seven more back-to-back wins.
I plan to be here till the end.
No excuses not to win. I got to pick my own sin.
[dramatic music playing]
[Brenna] So hot.
I'm wrapping a bunch of colors around a core.
Then I'll slice it open,
and you'll be able to see, like, the rainbow inside.
Some kind of obscure jelly that you see on those ASMR videos.
To each their own sin.
Sinners have more fun.
[Minhi] Yeah.
[Nick] Katherine, if you could pick any one of the seven deadly sins,
which one would you pick?
[Katherine] Maybe gluttony?
Wouldn't yours just be a pile of vegan food?
[laughs]
-It would be a giant pile of vegan food. -Soy beans.
-[Katherine] Soy beans, hummus. -[Nick] Kale.
-[Katherine] Kale. -[Nick] You glutton, you.
-[laughing] -[imitates munching]
[gentle string music playing]
My sin is envy.
Eh, I'm not sure why John Moran gave it to me.
Maybe envious of being another John?
I am making a picture-perfect neighborhood,
manicured lawns,
and all the houses looking the same, these white picket fences.
It's, uh, Perfectville. Yeah.
Making the houses, I kind of set up a quick mold.
Two pieces of graphite to make a nice little 90-degree pitched roof.
What do you think? Cute house?
Perfectville, USA. Population: one.
[intriguing music playing]
Donna, how prevalent are the seven deadly sins in art?
They're everywhere.
It really started in the 1400s and the 1500s.
And it was really meant to teach people about religion.
They needed to see these literal enactments.
But now they can be a take on these themes in a number of different materials.
Photography, ceramic exhibits and glass, of course.
I have lust.
So the flower is sort of the symbol of love,
but it's not love, it's lust.
So the flower is going to bite back.
The teeth look great.
Little Shop of Horrors, up in here.
I want to take this opportunity to show off my sculpting skill set.
So here I'm making the stamen part of the flower.
It's going to be reminiscent of drool…
[chuckles]
…but also the central part of the flower.
Cool. Oh, I like it.
It's got a little bit of movement to it.
I'm taking this challenge literally. The sin that I got is sloth.
I decided to start off with sculpting the legs,
and, once it's done, I decided to add texture.
I heat up a section, and I use a wire brush and kinda comb it.
Trying to make it look like fur, or… whatever a-- a sloth has. [chuckles]
[Nick] Trenton is making an actual sloth.
Would you say it is actually difficult
to come up with something that isn't so on the nose?
-Yes. -[both chuckle]
[Katherine] I think it's a really difficult challenge.
A little more devil in the detail.
[upbeat string music playing]
[Dan] I am making The Grapes of Wrath, based on the book by Steinbeck.
And right now I'm in the grape phase.
The book The Grapes of Wrath is about how poor and migrant families
were treated by the elite.
[dramatic music playing]
I'm doing my best to keep a cool demeanor in the hot shop.
I've definitely struggled with wrath personally.
And I've worked really hard to deal with that in my life.
My dad was killed when I was really young.
And instead of, uh, crying all the time about it,
I-- I got angry.
I was in a rage, you know,
and I was on the streets and I did a lot of things.
[music fades]
[clanks]
-Your grapes look great. -[Dan] The "Grapeful" Dead.
I'm not envious of Dan's grapes. I-- I-- I think they're real neat.
[chuckles]
[Dan] Big grape right there.
[pleasant music playing]
[Grace] Stop!
Now I'm making a gooey puddle with balls stuck in it.
[chuckles]
Obviously.
It's disgusting!
I'm creating this bottom puddle of blue glass,
and then I'm applying these orange balls hot and, like,
squishing them in to sort of create this sensational puddle.
We got two hours left!
-Already? -Yeah.
Ho… Holy…
[suspenseful music playing]
[sizzling]
Let's walk over here.
I'm gonna pull black and white cane.
[John M] I have never made a shoe before,
so this is new to me.
I'm making some detail in the sole of the shoe,
so it has some texture on the bottom.
I'm just flattening out the bottom of the shoe still.
I've gone in and done a lot of the seam work
with a little butter knife.
Turn a little bit.
And that gives it like a sneaker quality.
I have never bought $300 sneakers before,
but the piece isn't about $300 sneakers, it's about the companies that make them.
I'm going to start putting some "sole" into it, then flash.
I am feeling hot.
Going back.
[in sing-song] It's a hot one today.
[fire whooshing]
Whoo!
I am hot. Just trying to keep my brain working.
-[Trenton] Tell me if it gets too crazy. -Oh, no, we're good.
I want it to be funny, so the sloth is wearing, like, a giant diaper.
He's too lazy to go to the bathroom.
[chuckles]
You'll never know if it's gonna be the way you want it
until it kinda comes out of the annealer.
-Whoo! -[exciting music playing]
There's so much creativity and energy in the hot shop today.
Uh, that might have something to do with the winner getting a Pilchuck residency.
[Katherine] It's a feather in your cap, as a glass artist.
To be given a residency is an amazing opportunity for these artists.
Monetarily, they've got the support of the staff and the facilities
to do whatever they want to do and explore, in glass.
I want to win this challenge badly. I've never been to Pilchuck.
I hope I win.
[chuckles]
[dramatic string music playing]
Yep, get under it.
[clacks]
-Hi, Dan. You have wrath? -I do.
What kind of technical challenges are you foreseeing in this?
So, I felt like I kinda got dinged by putting it together cold last time,
so I'm going for the hot.
-What would the Pilchuck mean for you? -[Dan] I would love the residency.
When I first started blowing glass,
I was ready to make paperweights and ornaments
to kinda get out of the place I was living in,
and, uh, then I went to Pilchuck.
Pilchuck has changed my life.
That's where I met many of the other
very inspirational glass artists in my life.
[clanks]
I will leave you to it. Looks like you got a lot going on.
-Yeah, thank you. -All right, good luck.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dan] We've got pages.
One hour left!
No! It's brutal.
Chaos!
[John S] I'm-- I'm-- I'm trying to go for a win here.
I think you have to with this level of competition we have this year.
If I'm gonna be somewhere competing, I want to compete against good people.
I don't want to be, you know, king of the idiots, right?
So… [chuckles]
[music continues]
[John M] All right, nice, nice heat. This is what we're looking for.
This is my first shoe ever,
and that is why I thought it'd only take me two hours,
and it has taken me three.
-Okay, grab it. -Yep.
Beautiful.
[timer ticking]
[Brenna] Picking up black and white cane,
the challenge there is the black gets softer than the white.
So, shaping this into an even form with uneven heats
just takes a little bit extra control.
And it's called a swoop cane technique.
We're taking a plunger and picking it up straight on top.
And that'll get the color pattern to swoop in the vessel form that I'm making.
So I have one shot to pick up this cane.
If it doesn't work, I have to do it all over again.
This is going to suck.
Oh, boy.
[sizzling]
-[music fades] -[clacking softly]
It worked! Bada-bing, bada-boom.
And now the fun begins.
[triumphant music playing]
Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow.
The shape of the vessel is what Lino would call a dinosaur shape.
Lino is an Italian Maestro.
Whoo! [chuckles]
And he's been this phenomenal best glass blower of our time.
So what we'll do is transfer it, pull the neck.
Take a light flash, please.
[Trenton] I think it's very important to do your own work here.
It's a small community.
Let me just torch the end.
It's dangerous if you're recreating someone else's work.
[Brenna] Come on out.
Forty-five minutes left!
Holy smokes.
[whooshing]
I want my vase to be more than just a vase.
I want it to have other characteristics that evoke a certain feeling.
[sizzling]
So, I start adding bits that look pointy,
and like thorns or like a weapon, even.
I'm ready.
I attach the thorns by having my assistant bring me hot gathers of glass.
I stick it and pull and cut at the same time,
which gives me a point.
[clinks]
These bits are everything.
[upbeat string music playing]
[clinks]
[pleasant music playing]
Go down.
Flip.
I'm making this platter of oozing holes.
[chuckles]
Flip.
It looks disgusting. I really like it.
The power of the flame when the glass gets so hot,
it will actually break through,
allowing those holes to, like, ooze out.
It's going to freak my mom out. She has a fear of holes.
[chuckles]
Okay, go ahead and flash.
It's like, "Howdy, neighbor" fence.
Half an hour left, everyone. There's half an hour left on the clock.
[Trenton] Gut-wrenching.
There's no couch because I ran out of time.
Not good.
I have to change the whole idea.
I have no elements that I wanted, like the books and stuff created.
I don't even have the couch.
Uh, I'm gonna try to make a blown beanbag chair.
We're all movin' now.
I have to make a pillow and then stick it together.
It's not a lot to do,
but the color application will take me probably a good 20 minutes,
so I am under the gun.
[exhales]
[tense music playing]
All right, level.
Turn, turn, turn. Stop.
So the grapes are going on hot…
Flip.
So, I bring over a fresh hot bit, attach that to the vine,
pick the grapes up out of the box and stick it into the fresh glass.
All right, run on over. Coming through. Hot glass.
Can anyone switch?
[Katherine] Fifteen minutes left, everyone.
Remember, there's a Pilchuck residency on the line.
[suspenseful music playing]
Push forward. Push forward. Push forward. Push forward.
I'm going to attach the-- the sneaker to the pillow now…
Blow, blow, turn, turn, turn.
…and it doesn't dip into the pillow as much as I need.
Okay, blow please.
Blow. Blow hard. Blow hard, blow, blow, blow. Stop.
-[crumbles] -Oh!
Flash. Flash, flash, flash.
I let the tassel get cold, and I knocked one of them off.
[exhales]
The question right now is,
should I add it again hot or should I make one and assemble it cold?
I got ten minutes, and I'm gonna make it.
Pull up a little bit. Pull up. Stop.
[clinks]
So close. So close.
Coming through, behind you. A big, hot glass.
Close the door.
[music building]
[Brenna] I think we should start putting the marbles on.
It's gonna go around.
[suspenseful music continues]
Okay, go! Go, go, go.
Grab it, take it.
Yes! [squeals happily]
Nice.
Barely in there, but, uh, not what I wanted.
[Katherine] Glassblowers, time is up.
Whoo! [chuckles]
-[John M] How do you feel, Dan? -Holy smokes.
I'm blown away.
[pleasant piano music playing]
[clunks]
[John S] For this challenge, we had to make a piece of glass art
inspired by one of the seven deadly sins and make it modern and more contemporary.
I had envy, so I chose to make a small village,
kind of Perfectville, USA.
I really like my piece.
[Grace] It's risky to be so experimental.
When the evaluators see this piece,
I hope that the sound will translate visually.
[John M] The sneaker looks like a sneaker. The flesh tones are there.
It gives the conceptual layer and the technical look that I wanted.
[Trenton] I'm not super thrilled with the piece,
'cause I know I can do better.
Being in this competition, it's a lot harder than it looks.
[Dan] This piece isn't about me.
It's about just the group at large of marginalized people,
people in my community.
[Minhi] I don't think I've decided quite yet
if it's lust or love for my piece.
[chuckling] It takes a little time to figure that out.
[Brenna] The story I'm trying to tell is,
when the world comes across as black and white,
it can be painful.
But be proud of who you are.
[intriguing music playing]
Welcome to sin city, population: seven.
[chuckles]
[Nick] Let's start with Minhi's piece.
It's very skillfully executed,
with the thorns and the teeth that are coming out of the flower.
It definitely has that sense of "careful what you wish for," perhaps.
[Katherine] I feel like there might have been a better way to, maybe, combine
the thorn aspect with the flower.
I mean, she could have had sort of thorns on the actual stem.
[Nick] This is Brenna's pride piece.
"Brenna's piece was inspired by the strength and pride
within the LGBTQ community."
[Katherine] Hmm.
I love the shape and color.
You know, my first take on this is maybe not a great one,
-to be perfectly blunt. -Oh.
[Katherine] You know, this shape and the way that she's used the cane,
the black and white stripes here,
is very reminiscent of a very well-known Venetian Maestro, Lino Tagliapietra.
And I do kind of take issue with how derivative this form is of his work.
And I feel like this doesn't really show Brenna's voice here.
But it looks really good.
This is Trenton's piece.
Can you guess what sin he had?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say sloth.
-[all chuckling] -Yeah.
Bingo.
[Donna] It's a well-done sloth.
He's very scary, those claws are terrifying.
But it's a sloth, then I kind of stop there.
I don't know what else he's trying to tell us, conceptually,
about the theme of sloth and laziness.
[Nick] This is John Moran's greed piece.
I love that he's using an athletic shoe as, kind of, the embodiment of greed.
I think we're all kind of aware of how fetishized running shoes are.
I'm not sure I get the flesh-colored idea.
You know, it sort of just looks kind of like mauve, pinky purple.
Think we're missing, like, that part of the message because of that.
Sculpturally, it's a really wonderful piece.
There's movement.
Love the silver leaf that he's used on the pillow
to give it that sense of polish and elevation.
[gentle piano music playing]
[Nick] So, Grace had gluttony.
Grace wanted to reference ASMR, or Auto Sensory Meridian Response.
Interesting.
The sounds are like, the smacking of chewing, the "S" sound of a whisper.
This is the cutting the cake.
This is the crunch sound of the pickle.
-Oh! -Okay, okay.
I can hear them when I look at them.
So I'm not sure, for me, because I didn't know about ASMR beforehand,
that I would have made that correlation.
I think everything else that we've looked at has been a little bit literal,
so I really appreciate that we're being taken on a little bit more of a journey.
[Nick] This is John Sharvin's piece.
His piece is about envy.
You've got two houses versus one house.
So there's certainly that sense of the haves and the have-nots, perhaps,
that I think he's telling us in this piece.
The detail on the fence is really wonderful.
[Katherine] This really shows a progression of John,
you know, articulating his concepts but-- and also his technical skill.
And I think we're starting to see that a bit more.
[tense music playing]
[Nick] This is Dan's.
This is done extremely well.
Everything is put together hot. Amazing craftsmanship here.
[Nick] Great grapes, really nice book.
Where's the wrath?
There's something there he doesn't wanna deal with.
[Donna] There's a lot of coiled energy in grapes.
The book is closed.
And maybe that's a sign of Dan's response to wrath right now
is that he's not ready to deal with it and it is very tightly bound.
All right, well, let's bring in the glassblowers.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dan] It's really anybody's game.
There's a little more on the line this challenge
with the Pilchuck residency.
There's some meat on the bone.
I'm lusting after a win. I want this win.
Glassblowers, welcome back.
Your deadly sins really brought the gallery to life.
[Donna] I was really taken by the way everyone responded to the challenge,
to the way it really revealed something about you personally,
and how you really responded to the seven deadly sins.
John Moran.
We understood that you were
kind of trying to mimic various flesh tones.
Do you think that came across in the piece?
The sneaker and the pillow being fleshy was important to the concept
because I wanted to show the separation, the disparity of wealth.
Mm.
And that's what-- I was trying to bring the flesh tones into it,
on both the sneaker and then the pillow underneath of it.
But overall I-- I'm happy with them.
Hmm. Okay.
[Nick] Brenna.
So my first thought was the piece was very referential
of the work of Lino Tagliapietra.
Tsk. [inhales sharply]
-[Katherine] Wanna talk about that a bit? -[Brenna] Sure.
I'm obviously a very big fan of his work. His work is phenomenal.
I do love the flattened vessel form,
maybe even subconsciously inspired by Lino.
But to put the marbles going up the side, I personally haven't seen before.
[Katherine] I mean, Lino is an incredible glass artist,
but did you not think that there might be another form
that would be more Brenna Baker?
[chuckling] If I was to do it again, because I have made it so similar, um,
I would choose a different form, for sure.
[Nick] Dan.
You created Grapes of Wrath.
Yeah, so my piece is about wrath.
John, my good friend, walked over
-and gave me the old one-two. -[chuckles]
So, Dan, we felt that the piece read very literal.
Well, I mean, I could go into
all the anger management classes I've been to, but, I mean,
I don't know how I would make that piece necessarily.
I think that's what we're, sort of, hoping or expecting to see.
But we're also very, very impressed with the technical aspect,
putting it all together hot.
-You did an amazing job. -Huy ch q'u. Huy ch q'u. Thanks.
[Nick] Trenton.
I remember, from your drawing, you had some other elements.
This piece was a real challenge.
The four-hour time limit is not a lot of time.
I could spend four hours just making arms and legs for this piece.
It was definitely hastily put together.
Um…
Yeah.
Thank you, artists. We're gonna take a moment to discuss.
[suspenseful music playing]
I just wish they hadn't gone so literal.
Honestly, I'd probably smash this piece if I wasn't in this challenge.
I just wish I had more time.
[Brenna] I hope the evaluators see art in my piece.
I hope they see the story that I'm trying to tell.
[John M] I would love to have a second win under my belt.
Please be me. Please be me. Please be me. [chuckles]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Nick] It's time to find out whose work has earned them a residency
at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School.
[music building]
Today's Best in Blow is…
[music fades]
-Grace. Congratulations. -Ah! I'm sorry.
[laughing]
Oh, my God.
I frigging won!
[laughs]
[inhales deeply]
I won a challenge!
Grace, I just want to personally say congratulations
and tell you how excited we are to welcome you to Pilchuck.
Thank you. I'm so excited.
Oh, my God!
It really validates my position in this competition,
and that I'm a real competitor,
but also I won a frigging residency to Pilchuck,
so that's iconic.
[laughs]
I'm so excited.
[sighs] Ooh!
And now let's talk about the ultimate sin.
[suspenseful music playing]
The artist who did not blow us away is…
[music building]
Brenna.
Please say your goodbyes and exit the hot shop.
-[John M] You okay? -It's all right.
Thanks, guys. Love you.
I definitely feel proud. I feel proud of my piece.
I'm sorry that it was, you know, compared to the fabulous Lino Tagliapietra.
[sad music playing]
[Dan] Glass can be a cruel mistress.
You get too close, sometimes you get burned.
Glassblowers, congratulations on making it through another challenge.
We'll see you at the next.
I would like to do better, but it's not from a lack of trying.
[John S] I'm worried about everyone.
This is way more of a challenge than I anticipated.
We're not even close to being done.
[closing theme music playing]