Rich Arentzen- Glass Maker.
The Vermont Maker Project by Story Works and Vermont Flannel.
“There's this kinetic beauty to glassblowing, there's this fluidity,” says Rich Arentzen, co-owner of Burlington’s AO Glass. “It's always moving and you are almost always working with other people in the same way that you would play a sport with someone or make music...”
AO Glass is tucked behind Speeder & Earls on Burlington’s Pine Street. That is, if you can “tuck” a huge, 10,000 ft wide-open factory space anywhere. It contains a beautiful, expansive shop full of gorgeous glass – everything from whiskey glasses to vases, from bowls to folklore-inspired ornaments – near the entrance, while along the back wall several ovens glow, spewing out heat at 2000 degrees F while a few young glass blowers chat and turn out perfectly-shaped white glass balls.
“One thing that we really pride ourselves on,” Arentzen says, “is our sense of hospitality. We try to be very welcoming to people that come in. We often bring them right to the furnace and maybe they've never stood that close to 2000 degrees F and literally people's mouths drop, and you can come in the most disgruntled person, but after that, there's this human connection of standing around a campfire or watching the eclipse or something.”
