| On a brilliant warm
Saturday that set high temp records for the day, I wandered off by bike
and bus to two open houses for relocated studios. MarrsArt and
SpiralGlass had separated out of the old Hickory Street studio that had
operated under at least a couple of names. SpiralGlass went only a
few blocks while MarrsArt moved to the northwest corner of Dallas County
nearer the father and son team's homes. While Dallas has a pretty
good bus system, on Saturday it is weaker and getting some places requires
either long rides with long waits between buses or adjusting timing to
make for shorter rides and shorter waits, which is what I did. Arriving a bit early, I had a very good meal at Michael's Restaurant, just up the access road at I-35 a mile east of the studio. |
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| MarrsArt is the operation of Ron and Chris Marrs, father and son. The building is on Valley View west of I-35 in the northwest Dallas county city of Farmer's Branch. There is an impressive amount of space available. The building is owned by a former co-worker of the elder Marrs who happened to be looking for a tenant for the higher after portion while using the front for his own business. [moved since visit. 2009-02-13] | |
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| Ron told me that the building had been occupied by a company that used the rear to build prototypes of pizza ovens, etc., which were demonstrated in a show room with offices in the front, so it has lots of power and gas. The space is equipped with a pair of swamp coolers that have to be replumbed (left). (Click on pictures to enlarge.) The ventilation hoods of the demo room were moved to the back over the hot wall (center) The glory hole, furnace and pipe heater were moved from the Hickory Street site while the 4" OD smaller gloryhole (with thicker insulation so much smaller inside) is under construction. A full garage door off left gives access. The hanging lights and skylights give the space a bright feel The gallery is off right. | |
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A supply of color bars is stored convenient to the cut off saw.
Chunks of color are preheated in a kiln with the colors marked out on a
whiteboard above (a common arrangement because various dense colors are so
dark as to cause confusion.) Frit is in bins at the other end of the
blowing floor.
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| Gallery space is located inside the public entrance to the building (of course) at the right end of the outside shot above. The gallery runs almost the full width of the building with a space for small shop tools (and food for the open house!) along the back wall. | |
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| One of the design items is the fairly common rondel sold individually as on the wall above, but also sold in arrangements as the one on a custom powder coated grid (credit to powder coating company to left) As can be seen in the side shot, a large clear foot/cookie is applied to give a good connection for hanging. The hook is a standard item sold for the grid, but also powder coated to match. I assume that installations normally use a less intrusive wire. | |
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