Greg Smith Pi disc from USA

Greg Smith was a founder member at Avalon Glass on the West Coast of the South Island from 1985 to 1995. Greg talked about this remarkable studio in an even more remarkable talk he gave to the Glass Art Society in Seattle in 2003, and I wrote a blog entry about it in December 2012 at http://newzealandglass.blogspot.com/2012/12/avalon-glass-should-not-be-forgotten.html. In 1995 Greg set up Te Miko studio at Punakaiki with his then wife Carolyn Hewlett. As well as blown glass work they made glass jewellery. Carolyn worked as Greg's hot glass assistant. Te Miko was disbanded in 1999. 

 

In response to this image, Greg Smith said in a Facebook post in 2021:

I made this material in a small open cast mold in Oceanside California with Bullseye Glass - scrap and confetti. I got one other piece out of the cast. The centre core was made using ceramic fibre board which at the time was unavailable in NZ. A great help in casting. 



I think it was 95. I had Arts CounciI funding for a kiln glass/fusing/casting workshop/ summer camp that Boyce Lundstrom (co-creator of Bullseye Glass) was doing in Portland. For a variety of reasons it failed to happen and I ended up in California. I stayed with Boyce in this funky little house in the barrio in Oceanside. I was there in the beginning phase of Oceanside Glass. The original factory was close by and they had been making glass tiles for about a couple of months. I designed a pacific motif tile for them while I was there as well as doing a variety of different things and meeting heaps of the glass fraternity whom Boyce knew. The business partners were all great guys, two professors and a young hot shot lawyer nephew from Orange County. Carolyn Hewlett and I were there for the opening of their new building and first furnace and Carolyn was given the job of testing and evaluating a new idea that Boyce called Squirt Glass. It was great time.

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