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…
…fight fire with fire.
And now the fun begins.
Go big or go home.
And with great risk…
-Oh, God. -Rest on the bench. Rest on the bench!
-I always come out swinging. -…comes great reward.
Yeah, baby! -Whoo!
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 you're about to be Blown Away.
Glassblowers, you've officially made it to the halfway point of the competition.
-Good job. -All right.
-Nice.
Whoo! Halfway!
I never thought that I'd make it halfway. I just kinda feel like I'm the underdog.
I know only one person can win this thing, but it's weird, I want everyone to win.
Your numbers may be shrinking,
but this next challenge is all about going big.
Uh-oh.
Which is why we've brought in visual artist
Briony Douglas as your guest evaluator.
Briony's made a massive impression with her supersized sculptures,
including a giant eight-foot-long sneaker made entirely of plastic lids.
I love playing with scale,
taking the mundane and giving it power and presence.
I really think it can change the way we look at the world
and the small details all around us.
In each of these boxes is a tiny object
you're gonna have to replicate on a grand scale.
So come up and grab one.
I'm torn between excitement and nervousness.
Artists, open up your boxes.
The object I got is…
a chess piece, and it is the knight.
I got the thimble.
I got caramel popcorn.
This is gonna be pretty hard.
John Moran, what did you get?
Uh, a pimento olive.
I don't eat them, but, uh, I think it's gonna be a fun object to make.
I hate olives. I don't know what it is. I especially don't like green olives.
-Trenton, what's in your box? -Uh, I have the pushpin.
-And, Grace, what do you have? -Uh, we're gonna roll the dice today.
For this challenge you must scale up your item to 12 inches minimum.
Twelve inches is no small feat.
Uh, it's gonna be hard.
So we're giving you each five hours and two assistants.
Nice.
-Thank you. -Yeah.
We will be evaluating your finished pieces
based on size, technical skill and realism.
The winner of the challenge will be named Best in Blow.
And as ever, the artist that does not blow us away
will be asked to leave the hot shop.
Glassblowers, are you ready?
Your time starts now.
I got caramel popcorn. The realism of it is gonna be a challenge.
There's a lot of nooks and crannies,
especially with the scale that we have to do.
This is gonna be a hard one to win. I'm a little guy, uh, but I can go big.
I think.
I got the pushpin. You know, this one's pretty straightforward,
this challenge, which, I think, will be great for me.
This whole competition, I've been kinda on the bottom.
I don't like losing.
So I'm hustling because I want to win.
-I got a thimble.
That's got a lot of texture, so that's gonna be the trick.
Realism is difficult.
I mean, we're taking the molten material
and trying to will it in to resemble something else.
I've made a fair amount of big glass, but it-- it's never without its challenge.
I'm not a big fan of olives, but studying it, it's a cool object.
But to make sure that I get the texture and the elements in perfectly
is where it becomes a lot more tricky.
Then when you throw scale into the mix, it's a whole nother ballgame.
Internally, I am freaking out a little bit.
I've been given the knight chess piece,
and I'm gonna shoot for maybe 14-15 inches.
I love a challenge.
I definitely don't need a knight in shining armor today
because I'm the queen.
I got a dice.
So I don't typically work in realism, so this is gonna be a challenge.
But I… I mean, I put my head down, and I work my ass off.
And that has been, like, my MO since day one.
It's do-or-die time.
Going big today.
This looks good.
Feel the burn, baby.
This is a very technical challenge.
It's, here's your object, now make it large.
-Caramel. -Yeah.
So, we're working on a thimble, like, a sewing thimble.
So I'll get all the glass, kind of, sort of, set up in a taper.
We're going a little bigger than the 12 inches on this thimble.
Don't know how this will work.
Okay, so we gotta close it up a bit.
I got green olive with a pimento inside.
I'm gonna start with the pimento first.
It's not as simple as it looks.
It has all these kinda nuances in the form.
So I'm trying to match it as much as possible.
Oh, yeah, looks good.
All right, that's good.
Briony, I heard that you binged every episode of Blown Away.
What was it about the competition that got you hooked?
So as an artist, I feel like I put a piece of my soul into everything that I do.
So to watch them create pieces
that could potentially break all the time was so riveting to me.
All right, let's do this.
Who do you think has the hardest piece to replicate?
You know, they all have their challenges.
I like my knight, but it's hard.
I've never made a horse before.
Good times.
John Sharvin has caramel corn as his object.
I actually think that that might be one of the harder ones to do.
You know, it's like this kinda lobed form,
the color's really particular, there's a lot of detail on the surface.
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, we got this.
Now we're getting somewhere.
I think Grace and I have the hardest pieces.
Mine has a lot of detail, Grace has a dice.
Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow.
It's a little bit do-or-die here.
Let it go on center. Center. Center.
It's gonna be a bitch.
Hanging on by a thread.
I am now starting on the olive.
I want to try to recreate this color of the olive to achieve realism.
But I can't tell right now if it's too much orange.
Colors of glass can change when you heat them up and cool them back down.
Some look different when they're hot than when they're cold.
Blow, blow, blow!
Okay, and stop. Whoo! My nipples.
The color and realism is, like, one thing we're gonna be judging them on.
They really want to make sure that they get really close on the color.
Let's get that frit on the marver.
You know, I kind of opt to use a reducing color,
which puts a metal sheen on the outside of the thimble.
It's all about getting that internal temperature right.
All glass color is made with metal oxide.
And a really gas-rich flame
will make the metal and the color raise to the surface.
Science.
They want it to, like, look like an actual pushpin,
so I'm gonna waste,
you know, a couple hundred dollars in silver leaf today.
So after I get my overall shape of the needle,
I take silver leaf, and you kinda just roll it onto the glass.
It's like a blanket.
I think the silver leaf is definitely gonna make this piece pop.
Almost there.
The challenge is realism.
So if it doesn't look real, I don't think I can win the challenge.
Say I were to start taking a glassblowing class,
how long would it take me to get good at it?
It really depends how much you do it.
If you're doing it every day, even a little bit every day,
it'll probably take a couple of years.
I often say if I had known how long it would take to get good,
I probably wouldn't have bothered.
But I'm glad I didn't know.
It's tough.
Get it nice and gooey.
Sometimes glass doesn't wanna do what I want it to do,
but I feel that I grow every day.
Beautiful.
There we go.
And a lot of that is remembering my late husband, Jesse.
My husband used to tell me,
"If you ain't scared, you're not hot enough."
I feel Jesse with me here, and every time something good happens,
I feel like it's him giving me like a little nudge, like, "See, I told you."
What's next? What's next? What's next?
Flip.
Push harder, Em.
Dice is pretty hard because glass doesn't like to be a square.
Glass is this round, fluid, beautiful babe.
And it doesn't want to go into a box,
but I have to kind of coach it into doing that.
Flip.
Pulling cane.
Noodle-roni.
I got the thimble.
In realism, one of the things is-- is the texture.
That's good.
I'm picking up the cane to add the texture to make those lines.
Ooh, this is good, what Dan Friday's doing.
Hold it down, uncap. Uncap.
The timing has to be right for the canes to stick correctly.
It's a one-shot deal.
Like, once you stick 'em on, they're not moving.
Good job, guys.
See, that's the part where we could have screwed it up but we didn't.
Katherine, you were super adamant
about giving the glassblowers two assistants.
Why?
When you are working on this scale, it just makes a huge difference.
It's pretty much essential.
The pipes are bigger, bigger diameter and heavier.
Beauty is pain. Pain is beauty.
I would need to, maybe, work out a little bit more if I did this.
-Let's get it a little hotter. -Yeah.
The moment I found out I was in the competition,
I hired a trainer.
My endurance is up.
I've never been in better shape.
I've worked for this.
This cube is whooping my ass.
It feels a lot heavier than it actually is.
Because it's like taking a 25-pound weight and putting it on the end of a pipe.
Oh, and twist it for five hours in, you know, 2,000-degree heat.
Small and mighty.
There's a term in the industry we like to call "boner arm,"
and that's when your hands, like, lock up.
It's never good when you get the boner arms.
There you go. Do it like you mean it.
Right now we're just shaping up the olive.
The olive has to be a minimum of 12 inches,
but I'm planning to go larger.
We're already over 12 inches.
I'm working on the pushpin handle.
I blow a sphere on the bottom,
and then have my assistant push really hard with the paddle,
and that'll create that very sharp edge.
All right, everyone off.
Flip!
I'm really happy with the overall look of the caramel corn.
I'm using a technique called inside sculpting,
where I'm gonna be pushing all the detail out from a bubble.
I'm making all the little kernels and the dimples all over it.
Stop.
So, to make this dice look realistic,
I had to make sure all the dots are in the right place.
We have to do this 21 times.
Working beside me is Grace…
-One, two, three, go.
Man, they are slaying it.
-Ugh.
Goddamn you.
Okay.
Oh… it's devastating.
I feel for Grace.
Your heart gets a little hard over the years.
You just-- That's the pill you have to swallow is, glass breaks.
…me, dude.
I mean, it sucks, but, you know,
you can, like, fuss over what's going on in front of you,
or you can make the most of it and work around it.
As a queer person, I have to do that in my daily life all the time.
Gotta bust ass.
I'm not as upset about the piece hitting the floor.
I'm more upset that now we have to do it again.
We're just gonna make another one.
We're just gonna go smaller.
Turn, turn, turn.
Ooh, that's a hot bench. Burning my fat.
-Hi! How you doing? -I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Things are going great.
How are you feeling about working with this much glass?
It's a challenge.
I've done inside sculpting before, but not on this scale.
Are you ready for a win?
I'm so ready for a win, please.
-I don't wanna go home without any wins.
I know there's me and Trenton that haven't won one yet.
John Sharvin's popcorn,
I mean, to be honest, it looks like a turd.
What time? What's the time?
Thirty minutes left, everyone.
Thirty minutes.
Phew! Beauty.
In order to get the horse head flat, I have to get the whole piece hot,
and just brute force with corks get it to squish as much as I can.
And I have to do it over and over and over again
until I'm happy with the profile.
It's looking pretty good.
I'm a total train wreck.
Well, once again, I'm making a dice.
Process is going much better.
This time I made sure the bottom's thicker,
the sides are thicker, everything's even.
So far, so good.
Been rolling the dice all day.
All right, everyone, you have 20 minutes left.
Make sure your piece is a minimum of 12 inches.
Doing great, team. Almost there.
Getting ready to make the bottom half of the thimble.
Push down.
I'm turning. Turn with me. Turn. Go, go, go. Off.
We're gonna stick the pimento in and just torch it.
Torch that lip.
I want you to be ready with the torch when I tell you.
Turn, turn, turn. Stop for a second.
Dump it.
When I put the pimento in, it falls inside of the olive.
No, no, no, go on the bench, rest on the bench.
-What? -Rest on the bench. Rest on the bench!
So I'm lying on the floor in a pile of broken glass,
and hoping that I'm gonna be able to get this pimento free.
Come on. It's stuck in there.
It is what it is.
Can't get that out.
It was not "pi-meant to be."
Gonna make another pimento that will fit inside,
probably right next to that one.
On the inside I am screaming.
Fifteen minutes!
We're all in a race.
We're gonna make it in time. It'll be great.
Okay, let's get this thing off. Lift it, grab it. Down there, yep.
I got my piece away, and I still have some time,
so I'm going to make a couple added details.
Keep poppin'! Keep poppin'!
We're getting ready to attach the needle to the pushpin.
-Oh, no!
I go to transfer it, and the needle breaks in half.
Flip.
Might have to glue it, eh?
What's a little bit of glue amongst friends?
Five minutes left.
Time to get your pieces into the annealer.
-How do you put this on? -It's gonna be cutting it close.
Hit it with the back of the pipe straight up and down, hard. Yep.
-There you go. Well done. -Got it?
Coming through, guys. Watch your back.
Get under it!
Good job.
Oh, my God.
Glassblowers, your time's up.
Nice job.
Nice redemption.
It's over. I don't have to make a dice again.
Nobody ever ask me to make a dice again because the answer is no.
For this challenge, each artist was given a tiny object,
and we had to replicate that object in a large scale.
So with this piece, I want to hit all three boxes.
I want it technical, I want it to look realistic,
and I want the scale to be larger than what was required.
I hope the evaluators see the details I tried to put into it.
That I really wanted to get this, kind of, imperfect color that mimics realism.
There were struggles with this. It's got silver leaf on the outside
because the reduction didn't work out quite how I had hoped.
It burned off. And it-- it needed to be shiny.
I hope that my piece shows that I didn't give up, I tried my best.
So I hope that that transparency proves positive.
I'm pretty happy with how everything worked out on the caramel corn.
It's kinda hard to tell who has the winning piece.
I think it'll be pretty close.
Well, well, well, I don't think I've ever seen such an upscale gallery.
I am super impressed with the scale and the accuracy.
I just want to touch everything, and I don't know if I'm allowed to.
-John Moran's piece is up first. -Mm-hmm.
This is what he started with.
It definitely reads as olive.
-Mm. -Oh, wow.
I cannot get over the texture of this.
-How do they do this?
I… This is incredible. I can't get over just even the coloring.
I love the details,
like this little cross hatch down in the bum area here.
I think John Moran has really exhibited his skills here at sculpting
and, kind of, capturing the essence of a real object.
Even the details around how he's put the pimento inside,
I think, are pretty spot on.
Now the moment of truth.
-Ah! Uh-huh. -Oh!
Yes. So this ruler is 12 inches,
and this olive is definitely bigger than the ruler.
-Mm-hmm. -Nailed that part of it.
The only thing that I'm gonna point out
is that it's not actually the color of the olive.
But I feel like a fresher olive out of the jar,
this is pretty emblematic of that color.
I love "olive it."
This is Dan's thimble.
I'm a little disappointed.
Don't know if it's as good a reproduction of the thimble
as I think he could possibly make.
The color on the surface is actually silver leaf
that's been applied after the piece has come out of the annealer.
You know, I've used gold leaf quite a bit, and this just seems a little messy.
Would you say that the silver leaf is kind of like lipstick on a pig?
Oh, that's a little harsh,
but it is, I think, trying to camouflage some things that didn't go right.
All right.
We have one more little measurement here.
So let's see. Okay.
-Oh. -Definitely on scale, he's good.
Yeah, yeah.
-This is Minhi's chess knight.
This is a challenging piece for anybody,
but I feel like when you look at this thing,
she has done a really incredible job of matching some of these details.
The horse head is one piece, right?
The horse head is all one piece.
That thing's huge.
Yeah, I mean, just the horse head is probably 12 inches.
-Just the head alone. -Yeah.
We have realism here. We definitely have scale and size.
And a lot of technical skill.
Mm-hmm. Agreed.
One thing is, in some areas you see kind of clear glass windows,
you know, where the color doesn't carry all the way to the edge.
So it does sort of reveal that it's glass,
and maybe you lose some of that sense of it being,
like, an opaque plastic object.
But I think she more than makes up for that with the sculpting
and the risks she took in, kind of, completing this as all one hot object.
-This is Trenton's pushpin.
This is incredible.
This is a piece that I would very proudly put in my house.
The size is incredible.
I mean, that's almost two times the requirement here.
Trenton's been skating on thin ice for a while now,
and this is a really great piece.
It is a great piece.
But, I feel like you see in the original how the edges are a little bit sharper.
Like, it's a crisper corner down here and a bit crisper corner up at the top.
That's definitely something that Trenton could have achieved.
When the challenge is realism,
I feel like he maybe should have paid a bit more attention to those details.
This is Grace's die.
Okay, I'm dying to do this. I just have to see how heavy this is.
Oh, wow.
-Can you-- Can you roll it? -No.
I'm just eyeballing that. That does not look like it's over a foot.
If I tip it up like this,
and then you measure from the top of the pedestal…
Just… Uh, it's not cuttin' it.
It broke my heart when they dropped their piece.
I can't even imagine,
so this one just seems a little smaller and not as good, unfortunately.
The markings are actually indentations.
Here they've got the opposite, where they're, like, raised dots.
That being said,
it is one of the hardest pieces here to replicate.
This is John Sharvin's caramel corn. And let's just see how large it is.
I'll give him credit for that.
Yeah, I feel like there's a square foot of air inside there.
-So that's gotta count for something.
I mean, as an avid popcorn eater,
I was very excited for this piece.
I do very much love the kernel.
I think that that just adds such a cool element to it.
I can appreciate how hard this is.
I think there was a real big miss in color.
I'm not really feeling the shape.
It's big, he really labored on it,
he persevered, he's got a lot of heart.
But I don't necessarily feel like it's captured
the-- the essence of the kernel.
So before we decide on a winner or a loser,
let's bring in the glassblowers.
I know that at any time I can go home. I think that's the-- the reality of it.
It was a rough day, but I bounced back, I recovered.
If I stay or go, like, I'm proud of myself.
I think I was brave in this challenge. There's no room to be mediocre now.
Each elimination round that I go into, I'm waiting for the harshest critique.
Artists, you all deserve a big hand for your gigantic glass.
Whoo!
Dan, how do you feel about your thimble?
I was happy with it. At the end, I kind of experimented.
I wasn't sure how to approach it.
I mean, you definitely hit the mark on the size thing.
But I think maybe in that translation, you lost a little with the proportions.
It feels like it's just a little too tall and thin.
Okay.
I don't know. Whatever.
John Sharvin with the caramel corn. Talk to us about your piece.
It was a hard form, there's a lot of detail.
The more you look at it, you're like, "Crap, there's that there."
There was a lot going on.
You know, the thing that I was a little bit let down about
was the color of the popcorn.
I thought the caramel would be brighter. But ended up a little dark.
-You know, left on the stove too long. -Thanks, John Sharvin.
Thank you.
Grace.
You know, this was a challenging shape to make.
Glass does not like to be square.
Especially doesn't like to be big and square.
Not many people do.
-Uh…
So, I wanted to try, but it just didn't work out.
But at least we're looking at something. I'm glad to see something on the pedestal.
Thank you.
Trenton, with the pushpin.
It seems like an easy form to create, but I don't work at large scale like this.
But overall, I'm satisfied with the piece.
I will say that you had the largest piece at 23 inches.
Nice.
I mean, in some ways, I think you had maybe the simplest object to replicate.
And certainly from here there's no doubt that we're looking at a pushpin.
I guess, maybe, because it is such a symmetrical form,
I feel like there's a bit of a missed opportunity
for some of the crispness of some of the edges,
the corners at the top and bottom.
I agree.
Thank you, artists. We're gonna step away to deliberate.
Somebody has to win and somebody has to go home.
I don't want to be eliminated, but I also don't want Dan to leave.
I'm just worried about myself at this point.
There are other things too, but I feel like size is a big issue.
I really just can't get over the color. I really think it missed the mark.
It's out of my control. I've done what I can do.
Artists, we had two decisions to make, and neither was easy.
Today's Best in Blow is…
Two artists.
There's never been two winners before in Blown Away history.
John Moran.
And?
And Minhi.
Oh! Really?
Super shocked.
To be a winner with John Moran,
I'm elated.
I wasn't expecting that.
And now for the artist that did not blow us away.
Leaving the hot shop today is…
Grace.
Please say your goodbyes and exit the hot shop.
I'm so sorry.
-It was so good to meet you. -Good job, you guys.
I'm super proud. I mean…
Let alone getting this far, but winning a challenge…
There's nothing I could've done differently
other than picking a different box.
Thanks, guys.
It was a wonderful time.
We had so much fun, and I wouldn't change anything.
This won't be the last time you'll see me, you know.
I'll be around and still kicking ass in other places.
Congratulations.
You're still all in the running for the grand prize
and the title Best in Glass.
We'll see you at the next challenge.
At this point in the competition, it's me and four men.
It's a big weight on my shoulders.