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. Get ready to be Blown Away.
Glassblowers, congratulations on making it to the final four.
Final four is not enough.
The ultimate goal here is to get to the final.
That's why I'm here.
There are four amazing artists at the top four right now.
I have no idea what's gonna happen, but I know it'll be a fight till the end.
You are incredible artists.
But we know that you haven't gotten this far all by yourselves.
You've inspired, pushed, and supported each other
throughout the competition.
And not to mention the friends and family who are supporting you back home.
I miss my kids. I talked to them last night.
My girlfriend, Marta, has been behind me the entire way.
She's managing the studio,
trying to keep things afloat, and give me the opportunity to come here.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
And that brings us to our next challenge.
Today the four of you are gonna be split up into two teams.
Ooh.
Team Challenge. I love to collaborate with people.
So I am excited, a little nervous.
John Sharvin, as the winner of the last challenge,
you won an advantage.
And that means you get to pick who you want to work with.
-Really? -Really.
-This is not super easy.
Everyone's good. What do you do here?
I mean, there's not a wrong answer.
-No. -There's not a right answer.
The advantage that John has, it kinda puts him in the hot seat.
Crap.
Yeah.
-Well…
John, you want to Team-John this?
-Hell, yeah. Team John. -All right, let's Team John this.
I think we'll work well together. I'd have picked John as well.
So that means, Dan and Minhi, you will be working together.
Team Seattle. Let's go.
I like the way it shakes out. It worked out how I would have chosen.
But it remains to be seen if it worked out in my favor, right?
To help Katherine evaluate your work are today's guest evaluators, plural…
Okay.
Glass powerhouse partners,
Robin and Julia Rogers.
Robin and Julia's collaborative works
have been shown in museums across North America,
including the Chrysler Museum of Art,
where Robin is the glass studio program director
and Julia is an adjunct professor.
The Chrysler Museum has a great reputation in glassmaking and art.
On top of that, they're both incredibly talented artists.
Julia and I have assisted each other for years,
but working collaboratively as two artists on one piece
is an entirely different ball game.
For this challenge, we want you to take two synonymous words
that go together to create one piece.
Pure and simple.
The word pairings are up to you, but the criteria is not.
All right.
Teams, you'll have four hours for this challenge.
You'll be evaluated as a team and individually on design,
concept and technical skill.
The winning team will be named Best in Blow.
The two artists on the losing team will be on the chopping block,
but only one person will go home.
-Oh, man. -There's a lot of pressure.
If I break my part of the piece, that's letting John down.
Then that puts us in the bottom two, and I don't want that on my shoulders.
Your time starts…
…now.
-Word pairings, what do you think? Uh… -There's a lot. There's a lot out there.
"Nice and easy."
"Hot and spicy"?
-"Hot and spicy." -Yeah.
-I like that. That's good. -Yeah, I do too. That's a good one.
We are going to have flames that point upwards with a ristra,
which is a string of peppers coming down toward the flames.
I'm kinda liking "alive and well."
I remember this story, Little Otik, it's like aScandinavian fairy tale,
and it's about a woman who can't have kids,
so her husband gives her a tree stump.
And the tree stump comes to life and starts, like, eating people.
And it kinda turns into this horrific fairy tale.
-Maybe we could do something with that. -Ooh. Ooh, I do like that.
We want to make one piece together.
And I think that's a really important thing in collaborating.
I'll do the flames, make 'em blow, and lots of color.
I'll do the chilies.
Dan Friday picked a pack of pickled peppers.
-Ah!
I could start on the baby rattle.
I can make the-- the, kind of, the limbs.
And then you can focus on the head and the body.
I would say, it's a match made in heaven. With hellish undertones.
-Boom.
Can't let the Johns just have this.
-Johns?
You're gonna use all the reds.
Yeah, we're goin' spicy.
Okay.
We're jumping in fast 'cause we have to make a bunch of parts.
All righty. Here we go.
There's a lot of pressure in this challenge.
The Johns are on fire. They've won a lot so far.
I'm really excited to be working with Dan.
You know, my feelings are only a little hurt that John didn't pick me,
but don't tell him I said that.
I'll do three rolls in the white.
John's working on the color recipe,
so when I start working on the pieces I need to make,
I have a recipe to follow.
We're working on one object, so we're constantly back and forth,
checking scale, checking size, checking color.
-That looks right. -Yeah, I like it.
So we're really non-stop communication.
So, Robin and Julia, what's the best part about working as a pair?
There's a lot of advantages.
One being that working simultaneously,
we can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.
Today I am responsible for making "hot,"
and Dan is making "spicy."
Hot and spicy has a correlation to being a glassmaker.
Just the temperature and then the attitudes that kinda come with that,
I think it's a really appropriate word pairing.
Our plan is to divide and conquer.
I'm going to be focusing on flames.
I'm making chili peppers.
I'm hoping to make 15 to 20 peppers.
The first thing I'll do is make a pepper and then make another pepper
before I make another pepper.
Hot tamale.
Dan and Minhi, I'm kinda kicking myself
'cause I'm like, "Crap, that's a good team."
Aw, man.
Robin and Julia, what would you say is the most challenging thing
of two artists working on one piece?
If you're each making parts for one piece
and the proportion is not right, the piece is not gonna feel right.
I could see that being an issue for John Sharvin and John Moran.
The way they're working, they're making elements that will have to fit together.
Whereas Minhi and Dan, I think, are making separate pieces
that will kinda come together at the end.
Our concept is "alive and well."
And we wanted to kinda make, like, an ambiguous version of that.
We came up with this creepy kinda fairy tale character
who's called Little Otik.
It's like a tree baby that comes to life and starts eating everything around it.
Making one piece, it's more risky than doing multiples
because if you break one multiple, it's like, "We'll make another one."
We put all of our eggs into one basket, conceptually, because we believed in it.
Would you say that John and John are doing the harder piece, then?
Probably. By what we're seeing so far,
it looks, maybe, a little bit more technically demanding.
So probably a little higher stakes
that it all comes together well in the end.
This is kinda like the pepper prep for the-- the stem.
And we just stick these Kevlar gloves inside this aluminum mold.
And it gives me just enough time to create the loop
that will attach the pepper to the ristra.
Gonna have smoked the whole glove by the end of this.
I have no idea what's going on on the other side of the shop.
I see branches.
John and John versus Seattle.
I don't care what they're making.
I know that they'll make something cool, so…
Right now I'm focused on making our thing really cool.
Team John for the win.
-Team John.
Who?
It would suck to go home at this point.
So for the tree baby, I'm starting with the cat rattle.
I need to get that done around the same time that John gets a arm done,
so we can stick it on.
The arm is like a tree branch.
So it has to have some kind of extra limbs like fingers,
and some bends where an elbow or wrist would be, but not too human.
I'm going for, like, eight inches, roughly.
Yeah. I'm going for about five-ish for the rattle.
I've never made a baby rattle before. I'll tell you that much.
Gonna put the rattle on and make sure the twigs bend around it.
It's important there's a hot connection on the palm of a tree hand.
And that's what'll give it the most stable connection to the rattle.
Then when I wrap the fingers around it, it'll be even more stable.
Okay, stop.
The reason it's a big deal to attach hot is that it's a risk.
Flip.
You stick a piece on that's not hot enough and it falls off and breaks.
And we don't have time for that.
So weird, I love it.
-Yeah, we're makin' things! -Uh, flash and then stay there.
We wanted to have something that really pops.
And I think this does it perfectly.
This is some gorgeous glass we've got here.
I love working with Dan. He's so great and he's so talented.
I think the best part is just the familiarity with him
and just being able to feel at home a little bit.
Seattle crew here.
Yeah, we both, yeah, live and work in Seattle.
Dan's strength is he has this ability
to make really smooth forms that are just gorgeous.
-Thank you. Yeah, awesome.
-How you doing over there, Minhi? -Making headway.
Yeah, you're on fire.
Minhi can do the really small, detailed work,
and also she brings it making the big pieces too.
It's nice to see that broad range of talent.
Aw.
Flip.
Okay.
How hard is it for our glassblowers to go from competitors to co-workers?
I might say, not as hard as you might think
just because glassblowing is always such a team sport.
You know, as glassblowers, we generally all like each other
and like seeing each other succeed.
I'm sure it's kind of a relief to actually be working with somebody
as opposed to against them for a change.
For this one moment in time.
-For this one challenge.
-And then sabotage sets in. -Yeah.
I need a little mouth hole. So these are the eyes. You see 'em?
So the next piece I'm working on is the head.
Oh, yeah. That's lookin' good.
I'm really happy with the texture and the coloration.
It's looking cute.
It's lookin' exactly like how we had talked about it.
Hey, guys, we got two hours left!
Two hours?
-Hello, Katherine. -Hi, John Sharvin, how are you doin'?
-Doin' really good today. -Yeah?
How is it feeling making it to the final four?
Oh, man, I actually did not really believe I was gonna be here.
-To be honest, it's crazy hard.
You are coming off of a win.
Oh, that was really fun, thank you so much.
-That was great. -It was all me. I'll take the credit.
-Okay, great. Yeah, yeah. -I'm kidding. I'm kidding, everyone.
Do you think that's given you a new sense of confidence here?
It's definitely helped a little bit.
It made me feel like, "Yeah, I am…" You know, "I can do this. This is fine."
Do you think what you and John are making gives you a chance at another win?
I hope so. We should be fine on time. We just have so much to get done.
-I will let you carry on. All right. -Thanks for stopping by.
-All right. Good luck. -Thanks.
Hi, Dan. How you doing?
-Getting hot in here a little bit. -Yeah?
Both you and Minhi are from Seattle.
-Have you guys worked together before? -Uh, yeah.
We both worked at a factory together.
It doesn't seem like you guys are talking too much while you're working.
You just each have your mission.
Yeah, which is a little different than the way the Johns are working.
-You guys are going for quantity? -Yeah.
I'd like to be able to see the piece from 20 feet away.
I'll quit, uh, "peppering" you with questions.
Oh, nice. I'll take it. Thanks.
The next step is to start working on the torso,
which is gonna be our building block to add all of our limbs to.
Yep.
It's a really important part of the piece, even though it seems kind of minuscule.
Go ahead and flip.
John, it's looking good, man. We're getting there.
There's 60 minutes left in this challenge, everyone.
Okay.
Dan, do you know how many peppers you've made?
Hopefully have made enough. We lost count.
Yeah, I lost count, too.
The peppers, some are two gathers, and some are three.
And hopefully that size variation will make 'em look cool as a group.
It's a regular, uh, pepper farm.
We need to start gettting ready for assembly.
-Yeah, let's do a nice-- -Let's do it.
-Go ahead in.
This is kind of the moment of truth.
Putting everything together to see if we actually did it right.
-Make sure it's really gooey. -All right.
That thing's juicy, dude.
This leg is shorter, so I won't push it in as far.
We don't have time to make a mistake.
One thing goes wrong, it's either not hot enough
or it's too hot, and you lose control of it.
It is something we have to be really careful about.
Flash.
At this stage of the competition, if it broke then I'm going home.
-We want to push those legs forward a bit. -Okay.
Right now it's sitting straight, and we need it to go like this.
Yep. Yeah.
Push, push, push, push.
-Keep pushing. -Yeah.
Okay, I think it looks good like that.
Once we've attached the legs, we see the proportions are right.
It looks exactly like it should,
it's really creepy-weird.
Okay, cool beans.
We still got work to do. Let's get moving.
Under an hour left, so I'm startin' to feel the heat.
Ooh, yeah.
I'm sort of nestling blown forms on top of each other
to make the different heat levels in the flame.
And this one right here is the very, very inside,
the tiniest part of the flame.
The hottest part of my flame is white.
You think about, like, "white hot."
So you have the white, is that the inside over there? Nice.
I think that there's a lot of beauty in simplicity,
so that's what we're shootin' for.
Thirty minutes left in your team challenge.
Right on schedule, dude.
Okay, so what I want you to do when you go to bong this off
is put the piece on the bench.
Things get intense when you have all these parts being attached hot.
All the way up. Bit, yep. There, yep. Okay.
Everyone needs to be hyper-focused during this.
Because if you stop looking at the piece for half a second,
you can hit an arm off immediately.
So there's a lot of focus. You know, tension is kind of high.
Flip.
That's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket,
it gets really hectic.
But it's impressive if you can pull it off, I gotta say.
Dan, there's only 20 minutes left!
Ah!
Quite frankly, I'm worried about me
not making the coolest thing and going home,
'cause I think the flames are pretty cool
but the peppers might seem a little mundane.
But, uh, hopefully together as a group, they're really beautiful.
All right, let's get on the head.
-Uh… -There should be an opening.
-There's a-- There's a mouth. -Yeah.
Flip.
Turn.
Okay, flash.
Take, lift.
You push the head up.
That's it. That's perfect.
Ten minutes left, glassblowers.
There's only ten minutes left.
Can you feel the heat? Ten minutes left.
And now you're gonna turn. Turn a little bit.
John, you got all the parts, hold it together.
Let me get in with the jacks. One, two, three.
Let's get this last one in here.
All right, let's put it in the box.
Go, Minhi.
Whoo! Yeah!
Hot stuff.
-Good job. -Whoo!
-Nice, Minhi. -All right. Great work.
That was fun, John.
The concept of our piece is, "Alive, and Well?"
It's a tree baby that comes to life
and starts eating everything around it.
There's this tie with the ristra and the flames about community
and coming together and being a glassmaker.
Welcome to the dynamic duo gallery.
This is Dan and Minhi's piece, "Hot and Spicy."
This is awesome.
I would totally want this in my house.
You know, I'm a little bit underwhelmed.
I feel like they haven't pushed themselves technically very far.
I wish they'd, maybe, just taken a little bit more time with each element
to really either heighten the reality
of the peppers, maybe the scale of the flames.
And maybe the proximity of them could be even a little closer, too.
But there's some things I'm really excited about in this piece.
When you first see it, it does occupy space.
It is very bright, and you're kind of drawn to it.
I really do enjoy the texture that I'm seeing in the flames.
I think that really feels warm and fiery and fuzzy.
One really nice thing about these flames
is it's not just what you're seeing on the surface.
If you get close and kind of look inside, you'll realize there's multiple layers,
and they're stacked upon each other, which is really rewarding for the viewer.
This is John Sharvin's and John Moran's "Alive, and Well?"
Question mark.
The creature is inspired by a Czech fairy tale.
Conceptually, I-- I really like it because it has many layers to it.
And then technically, I think it's a really interesting piece.
The texture is really great,
all the parts work together well,
and it tells a story.
I did notice that the head is darker than the rest of the tree baby,
so they didn't quite do a great job of matching the colors there.
It is a hideous-looking creature…
-…but so compelling.
I've got to say it looks very underwhelming
in comparison to Minhi's and Dan's piece.
It's just… It's a little twig baby.
I feel like that's kind of eye candy and really easy to like.
Maybe this just takes a little bit more to really, kind of, have it grow on you.
All right, we've had a lot of opinions.
So let's go talk to the glassblowers.
Let's bring them in.
The competition is tough. We all want to win.
I'll continue trying to pull away,
but I think every other artist will continue to try to pull away as well.
Making it to this point has taken a lot out of me,
but I'm not ready to leave.
The only way I'm going out that door is if someone pushes me out of it.
For this challenge, you had to work together as a team
to create one piece.
I think we were all really struck
by the two radically different approaches each team took.
One approach was more literal, while the other more conceptual.
Dan and Minhi, we'd love to hear more about your collaborative piece.
We were hoping to make a piece that was easily relatable,
that had really bold color and filled the space.
The bright colors and the way you've displayed it
really do make for a great installation.
Very accessible.
Do you feel that this represents the best that you can do?
That's what I liked about this challenge, being able to work with Minhi
and equally kinda come together
and bring both of our talents into a piece.
If you could change one thing at this point,
is there something you'd change?
More.
But there's only so much you can make in an allotted amount of time,
and we just pushed to make as much as we could.
Was shooting for 20 chili peppers, and I think I got 19, so…
-A little off, but we'll take it.
John and John.
Tell us about your piece.
Yeah, we, uh, kind of,
-created a tree child, Little Otik.
We wanted to do something, play with both of our styles,
so we knew it was gonna be on the cute side and the creepy side,
so that fairy tale kind of came to life.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you chose to display this piece?
We didn't want it at eyeline.
'Cause it's this child and it shouldn't seem threatening.
So we wanted to have it a bit lower
so you had to get down with it to get into the details.
The pedestal on its side almost kind of becomes like a sofa or a bench.
So he's welcoming in a way, even though it's this threatening monster.
-I really like it.
We noticed the coloration on the head is darker than the body.
Was that intentional?
We were using the same color recipe,
and going from solid sculpture to blown sculpture.
It's a little darker than we wanted, but at that point we couldn't go back.
Thank you, John and John.
-Thank you. -Thanks, Katherine.
Thank you, artists. We'll take a few minutes to deliberate.
I want to go all the way.
It was much more impactful, that larger scale and color.
We did what we came to do.
We collaborated. We did what we thought was best. So…
I kinda think they made it harder on themselves than they had to.
I've got work to do here.
Yeah, it's not over.
Thank you for waiting. We've reached a decision.
Today's winning team is…
John and John.
-Hey, buddy. Nice. -Mm-hmm.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Team John for the win. -That's what we've been saying.
-Ah…
On the chopping block is Dan and Minhi.
Well, we-- You know, we tried our best.
Dan and Minhi, as a team, you did not blow us away.
So, it comes down to individual performance.
Dan, why should you stay in the competition?
For this challenge, it's about, uh, you know, just kind of
participating and-- and pulling your load.
And I think I did my part of the job well.
Minhi?
I feel as though I utilized the properties of glass,
and I wanted to accentuate light and the transparency of the material.
I believe that if I stay here,
I can continue to push and really expand my horizons.
Thank you, Dan and Minhi.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
The artist going home today is…
…no one.
Whoo!
Yeah.
We've decided that you both deserve a shot at one more challenge as individuals.
-We'll take it, right? -Yeah.
So you live to blow another day.
And you're still all in the running for the $60,000 prize package
and the coveted title, Best in Glass.
You just might be looking at the final two.
-Yeah, I'd be-- I'd be okay with that.
Uh, that would be awful.
-We'll see you at the next challenge. -All right.