Arts / His face and tattooed arms beaded with sweat, Geoff Lee works a 1700∫F orange glob of glass hanging off the end of a long metal blowpipe. As the glass cools it slowly turns green. Lee is in Island Glassworks, the fully equipped glass studio he opened in a Kailua warehouse in July. Through the open back doors you can see the lightly waving grass of Kawai Nui Marsh. Lee’s assistant, Emily Thomas, exhales into the blowpipe, inflating the glass as Lee shapes it, slowly transforming the mass into a graceful vase.

‘I’m trying to develop a series of natural forms that complement the color. It’s such a pretty rainforest green,’ says Lee. A small gallery space carved out of the warehouse displays his seductive work–from functional $9 glasses to $500 oversized vases.

His workshop is O’ahu’s only glass studio open to the public. ‘Before this, if you graduated from the University of Hawai’i [with a fine arts major in glassblowing], you had to move to the mainland to do work,’ says Thomas, who got her degree this year. A Kailua girl, she never thought she’d be making glass in her hometown.

Island Glassworks is equipped with thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment–a 300-pound electric furnace, three fiery glory holes (the high-temperature ceramic cylinders that keep glass soft and pliable)–and is available for rent by experienced glassblowers. Lee also gives classes–a paperweight workshop, introduction to glass and glassblowing I and II. ‘[The studio] is in constant useÖit’s kind of overwhelming,’ Lee says in a low voice.

The skateboarder, snowboarder and surfer has been blowing glass since high school, when he took a class with noted Big Island glassblower Hugh Jenkins who was then a teacher at Punahou. Lee has worked at glass studios in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington–where he executed works by America’s most famous glass artist at Chihuly Inc. He returned to Hawai’i and got his master’s degree at the University of Hawai’i, where he studied with Rick Mills. Over the last four years he’s shown his work at the Academy of Arts, Linekona Art Center, the Hawaii Craftsmen annual exhibition and ARTS at Marks Garage, and he started the Art of Sake, a show of handblown sake sets by local artists such as Corey Avecilla and Mills.

Last year, Lee underwent reconstructive surgery on his shoulder and while he recuperated, he worked on the business plan for his dream studio. ‘I called friends on the mainland to find out what their expenses were, what the market was like.’ With financial help from his father, a year later Island Glassworks is a reality.

At a work station are medieval-looking tools–big wood ladels in a bucket of water, bricks of cork. ‘Nothing’s changed much since the 1200s,’ says Lee about glassblowing. Sparks fly as he rubs a scorching hot vase shape with cork, a material that leaves no mark on the smooth surface. Lee opened Island Glassworks to encourage glass art on the island. He’s toiling seven days a week, and watching him fluidly, expertly work his glass, trying to finish up before a class starts, he’s clearly the right person to plant the seed.

Island Glassworks, 171-A Hamakua Dr, Kailua (263-4527,

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