Behind the scenes

Heart of Glass

“I used to peek through the alley fence in my Dallas neighborhood and watch these guys blowing glass,” says artist Alison Berger, who was a teenager at the time. “I was fascinated. They took me in and showed me how.” Berger likens the process to “jumping off a diving board, catching a ball and throwing it to someone before you hit the water. There is an incredible precision, timing and choreography involved in glassmaking.”

While most blown glass is a simple extrusion, Berger’s innovative pieces are a complex fusion of blown and cast glass, often with an interior chamber. Three of her fused pieces are included in the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass 20th century design collection in New York. Memory is the theme that runs through the artist’s vessels as well as her lighting. Victorian fly traps, military hat forms and measuring devices are objects that have inspired her. “Conceptually, I look at forms used during different periods of history and how they indicate the times in which people lived. I take the form and reinterpret it in glass, minus the decoration.”

Berger has created numerous pieces for film sets and music videos. For 1998’s “Practical Magic,” she devised a laboratory of funnels, colanders and scales in which the film’s witches concoct potions. For the Madonna music video “Bedtime Stories,” she created a futuristic glass IV. When Hermes commissioned Berger to design an oil and vinegar set three years ago, she was inspired to create “Balance Line,” a collection of modern everyday objects such as salt and pepper shakers, cereal bowls, cream and sugar holders, wine decanters and wine cups. “I wanted to create modern heirlooms-what my great-granddaughter might collect in the middle of the the 21st century.”

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Throws of Passion

John Scott has been throwing pots for 40 years, and he plans on doing it for another four decades. “I never get tired of the process. Each vessel is unique.” Scott took his first art class during his junior year at UCLA. He was studying math and chemistry when his girlfriend Barbara, now his wife of 42 years, suggested he take a ceramics class. “I made a really neat pot the first time out,” he says. The next semester he switched his major to fine arts, and he’s been behind the wheel ever since.

Known for both open and closed porcelain vessels, Scott’s pieces are characterized by finger lines, thin walls and torn lips. “Throwing clay is a fast process,” he says. “If you take too long, the clay wins.” The process starts with a doughnut-shaped 15- to 20-pound lump of clay on the potter’s wheel, which Scott builds up with his inside hand as his foot drives the wheel. With the right hand he “accepts the clay” being pushed out and lifts it, leaving tracks as his finger circles the moving pot. “The more consistent the lines, the better the craftsman,” he says. “You can’t wiggle around; you have to be calm to make a pot.”

The drying and firing process takes about 4 1/2 days per pot. Scott credits his chemistry background for his earthy, muted hues-grays, browns, ochres and olive greens-his “old hippie colors.” By adding lithium and strontium, he creates different textures and effects. “I try to create appealing glazes people want to touch.” Several of these pots appealed to the set decorator for Ridley Scott’s upcoming film “The Matchstick Man.”

Making pottery is all about shape, though “there are no new shapes, of course,” the artist says. “The Chinese have been making pottery since 3000 BC. What I’m trying to define is what an open or closed vessel should look like to me; in the process, the pot takes on a personality.” The first time Scott made a torn-lip vessel was accidental. “The wheel was turning very fast, and when the clay tore, I decided it looked pretty neat.”

The artist believes ceramics are enjoying a comeback not seen since the ‘60s. “There’s something comfortable about a handmade container,” he says. “It’s a nice feeling to know someone made it. Repetition can become inhuman. When you look at 5,000 of anything, it loses something.”

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RESOURCE GUIDE

The Lantern (light with candle at left), $1,200; The Painter’s Lamp, $1,800 (far right), both at Alison Berger Glassworks, Los Angeles, (323) 650-5212.

Hanging pendant, $3,750, at Plug Lighting & Design, Los Angeles, (323) 653-5635. Roman Ring floor lamp, $3,500, and glass stool, $3,000, both at Alison Berger Glassworks. Four-piece bar set, from $660 to $1,100, at Arp, Los Angeles, (323) 653-7764. The Balance Line Collection tumblers for Hermes, $290 each, at inset glass pieces showing history of glass, $4,500, at Alison Berger Glassworks.

John Scott ceramic pots, $40 to $550, at Zipper, Los Angeles, (323) 951-0620.