HARTFORD — Ten years ago, it was boy meet torch, and it was love.

Seth Turner was an artist working in pottery. His buddy had a shack of unused glassblowing tools just sitting there.

“As soon as I saw the flame that the torch made, I immediately was just hypnotized,” said Turner, 32. “The whole day, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was magical to me, like watching magic.”

He picked up the basics within a few months. For the last five years, he has been a full-time, professional glassblower.

Turner makes pendants, marbles, vases and, increasingly, custom pipes for customers who he says are turned off by the inexpensive foreign imports that have hit Maine’s market since marijuana’s legalization.

“Now it’s who can make it the cheapest and fastest and most inexpensive,” Turner said. “It baffles me, the race to low quality.”

Turner grew up in the nearby town of Turner, logging as much time as he could in the art room at Leavitt Area High School.

He eventually got his own pottery wheel, and after high school created made-to-order garden sculptures, mugs, bowls and anything else. When a friend offered a spot in his basement to work, Turner discovered the glassblowing tools.

“I was learning off of scraps,” then bought fresh material, “and then it took right off,” Turner said.

With, of course, trial and error.

“Every glassblower burns themselves, usually not the same way twice,” he said. “From there, I used all my money from my full-time job to pay for my glass stuff. I spent every spare dollar and moment I had getting this up and functioning.”

His company name is Color and Time and headquarters now is in his own basement at the house he shares with his girlfriend, Cassidy. She and friends and family have all been supportive, he said.

Turner creates three to 10 pipes a day, with other art pieces mixed in. He sells directly and through a case at Strawberry Apothecary in Lewiston.

“Hundreds of people have sat in while I’ve made their piece,” Turner said. “I love educating people while I talk about it. It makes me feel like I’m being useful to that person.”

His most challenging piece was a 20-hour chameleon.

“(The customer) jumped right out of his skin when I pulled it out of the kiln,” Turner said.

His glassware ranges from $25 to $400, depending on time and materials. Business has consistently been stable or growing, he said.

Turner said he enjoys working for himself and that “when something doesn’t go right, it’s your fault. You can’t be mad at anybody else.”

He is also “not part of someone else’s bad day.”

But it can be a little stressful, the stillness, repetition and creating, and down the road he would like to get out of the basement a little more.

“In five years, I would like to be doing demos at public events,” Turner said. “That’s what really gets it out there and educates people.

“I’d like to mix the arts together, bring some pottery back that I was doing, a little bit of blacksmithing. I’d like to put them all in the same spot, all of the arts that are playing with fire.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

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