SAN ANTONIO — Most days Glen Andrews II sweats it out inside his studio in East Downtown.
"Most passions don't come easy," said Andrews, resident artist at Caliente Hot Glass.
The heat is not easy inside Caliente Hot Glass. But, neither is his art.
“Especially in glass, it usually doesn't come easily to anybody"
Glass art has been a lifelong fascination for Andrews.
"My entire life I have loved glass. It's always been something that I have been drawn to,” he said, adding that “my mother would collect little things for me when I was a kid. I loved it because it was like magic to me. I didn't understand how it happened."
It wasn’t until he was an adult and saw a glass blower at work that he realized it was his calling, too.
"It was a rare blessed moment when everything just kind of comes together and I realized this is what I was supposed to be before I became it,” he said. “To me, it was a rare occasion.”
It’s taken him almost a decade to master what he calls – the dance.
"You lose yourself in the dance and the rest of the world goes away,” he said.
He uses patterns and colors to tell a story, with every project different than the one before.
"I'm just now kind of turning the corner,” he said. ”Now I feel that I have a skill set - something that I am proud to show.”
Every piece created at Caliente is about more than just art.
"It's about love,” he said. ”Loving something so much that you are willing to sacrifice, or willing to take whatever road it needs [to] take you on.”
And he said when a project comes together: “It’s life-affirming to me."