HOT STUFF: Walker molding molten glass at his studio. Credit: Larry Biddle

W hether they're pondering a block of marble or a block of dreary storefronts, artists see the possibilities in raw material. So it is with Zen Glass Studios' new digs at the edge of St. Petersburg's Roser Park neighborhood. The dingy, squat buildings along Ninth Street S. might not look too promising from the outside, but for David Walker and Joshua Poll they offer as much inspiration as the plain glass rods they regularly transform into sinuous, multicolored artworks.

Zen Glass moved to Roser Park this summer; previously, they operated a studio/gallery space in the Grand Central district, but rents got too pricey. There's no gallery in the new place yet — just a fully equipped, if scruffy, workshop in a former car wash. Walker teaches classes there (he's an adjunct professor of visual arts at Eckerd), and Poll processes sales of their artworks — which range from their popular hurricane pendants (see page 26) to functional glassware to politically charged figurative pieces — through the studio's website, zenglass.com.

And they've only just begun. They just signed a lease with landlord Dick Martin for the vacant storefronts next door, which once housed two small church congregations (one space still contains wooden pews and an old Hammond organ). The business partners are envisioning not only an enlarged studio but a small café, too, because, says Walker, he's tired of not being able to find a good cup of coffee in the neighborhood. And they want to start a community garden in the back and perhaps set up a room off the café where Josh's girlfriend, a massage therapist, can work.

Ambitious plans, to say the least. But Walker has the confident ebullience, and Poll the quiet determination, to make their dreams seem plausible.

Besides, they're lampworkers — meaning they mold glass with a propane torch, or "lamp" — and lampworkers are a tough breed. "I tell my students you're going to get cut, and you're going to get burned," says Walker, "and [some of] your projects are going to explode." He and Poll share a scientific bent (Walker was a marine biology major in college, Poll's parents were geologists), a trait common to all glassblowers, they say, as well as talents in cooking and music. (Walker has been in several rock bands, and Poll's an amateur percussionist.) Plus, says Walker, "We're all little pyromaniacs."

Melting a glass rod over an open flame while applying color and blowing into one end is a dangerous, delicate process. Working on a goblet at the ZG studio recently, Walker — bushy hair tucked under a bandana, surfing scar on his forehead — showed the requisite mix of concentration and fearlessness. And a little showmanship, too; he learned early on that this art form can be an audience pleaser when, as a child, he watched a glassblower fire up translucent Mickeys and Donalds outside the gates of the Magic Kingdom. Since then, he and Poll have hit the streets themselves: they did glassblowing demos outside the Museum of Fine Arts during its blockbuster Dale Chihuly show.

Ah, Chihuly — the ultimate glassblowing showman. The Zen Glass team is excited about the prospect of his museum opening in St. Pete, not only because it will burnish the rep of the city as a center for studio glass, but because Chihuly is known for surrounding himself with the best "gaffers" — slang for glassblowers — in the world, and ZG hopes to interact with them.

For the moment, though, they're most excited about what's happening on Ninth Street S.

"It's why we call ourselves Zen Glass — it's a very here-and-now medium," says Walker. "The glass knows what it wants, I know what I want and we hope to meet somewhere in between."

The Handmade Holiday Guide

This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.