About The Artist

Hello! My name is Travers.

I learned glass when I was young. On some random Saturday in the fall of 2005, I was juggling in a field near some local soccer games. A man approached and told me he appreciated that I was entertaining his kids. Rather unexpectedly, he asked if I had ever thought about being a glassblower. The logic was that if I could juggle, I could blow glass. He handed me a card, and told me that I should come by his studio some time. He made me a marble and started showing me the basics of flameworking. I know it sounds a little crazy, but that's just how I happened to become a glassblower.

When I first learned flameworking, my relationship with glass was very practical. I’d hop on the torch to make low end functional pieces in order to make a quick buck while I was in between other jobs, and it was like that for a long time. I loved the medium, but working with glass became just a job. After a while I pursued other careers. I spent time studying and working in outdoor recreation. I switched things up again and spent time working as an engineer in robotics for a while, but eventually tired of the work.

In 2020 I found myself undergoing a radical shift in perspective. I downsized my life and moved back to my regional home of Western North Carolina. I started hiking again and studying philosophy. I began exploring nature based religion. It was in this atmosphere that I found myself back on the torch, and my relationship with glass had changed. I wanted to use the medium to express something specific. I looked around to see who was doing fully three dimensional encased trees and couldn’t find anyone doing the type of thing I was imagining. So I just started working out how to do it.

When I was learning trees, I would just try different things. I’d spend time with each trial and think through what worked and what didn’t. I’d think through what problems needed to be solved. I did this over and over again for about two years despite there being a lack of initial success or any kind of encouragement. Eventually I came up with a set skills and practices which amounted to a new technique for representing trees which no one else was doing at the time. The technique borrows insights from both painting and sculpting, but is not quite like either because it is also prone to all of the normal difficulties that comes with encasement in borroscilicate. The process for each tree can be quite time consuming and frustrating, but ultimately the technique gives me the flexibility to grow in the way that I express my relationship with nature.

The best part of my work now is in seeing people’s reactions. A lot of people have connections to different kinds of trees, and people will sort of light up when they see a piece that resonates. Different people are drawn to different styles and it is fun to see who is drawn to what. My hope is always that my trees end up in loving hands.