Elodie Holmes - Glass artist in Santa Fe

Shemai Rodriguez
Jul 8, 2016
5 min read

Elodie’s Santa Fe glass gallery looks like an underwater world where strange and beautiful forms float on rotating pedestals and light is transformed as it drifts through translucent colors. Organic flowing shapes draw you closer and invoke both curiosity and wonder. Inspiration for these beautiful and unique works of glass flows to Elodie, pronounced like melody, from all corners of her life.

“I try to walk this earth in a beautiful way.”

The moment of inspiration varies for Elodie. “Like music, sometimes the melody comes first, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes it’s all at the same time…It’s when you tap into the emotion that it becomes real. That’s what connects people.” She has never had a creative block. The ideas just come. Her imagination fills her sketch books with forms drawn from sea life and archetypal imagery, from birds and bugs, even from science fiction, a genre she enjoys. They all stimulate her creativity. She is “…always looking at how beautiful everything is.”

The complex chemistry of glass-blowing serves as inspiration for her and “…satisfies her science mind.” Her Aurora Collection starts with the chemistry of color. In this body of work, Elodie (which sounds like melody) uses an ancient Italian glass formula called calcedonia in which metal oxides such as tin, copper and cobalt react to each other in molten glass to create a swirled color effect. How you treat the molten glass on the pipe impacts the saturation of the color. Even the material itself inspires her; the way the glowing. melting glass slowly rolls and drips on the blow pipe, and the way she has to freeze its motion at just the perfect moment. Mastery of the skill to create that perfect moment at will has been growing for the past 35 years of working with glass.

As a glass artist, Elodie holds the end of a very long thread, one that stretches far back into the mists of human history. Mankind’s use of naturally occurring glass such as obsidian cutting tools and arrow heads, dates back as far as the stone age. But interestingly, the tradition of glass-making as “studio art”, or solely for the purpose of artistic or creative expression, is very recent. It's recognized as having begun in the 1950s. Before that glass was mostly considered a decorative art medium; certainly used to greate things of beauty, but they had a use, such as a window or a goblet. With the emergence of Harvey Littleton’s interest in glass-making as art. It was only in 2012 that glass artists celebrated the 50th anniversary of the development of studio art glass in the Unite

d States.

"I started small."

Excellent training and years of skill building that have produced not only an exceptional artist, but the thriving business owner of The Box Street Studios in Santa Fe, which has housed her studio and gallery, Liquid Light Glass, for 16 years.

The journey that brought her to this spot was not only long and arduous, but involved a great deal more than just developing artistically. Elodie came to Santa Fe in 1981 and co-managed the Melting Point, a glass shop on Canyon Road. In 1985, just four years after starting Melting Point, she was driving to Seattle to accept an artist in residence scholarship at Pilchuck Glass School.

She never made it.

She fell asleep at the wheel, veered off the highway and slammed head on into one of her greatest challenges. When first responders reached her she had two broken legs, a broken jaw, a crushed left arm, and was in respiratory failure. At death’s door, she had to be revived at the scene.

After multiple surgeries in just the first week, followed by two years of recovery that included an extended stay in a skilled nursing facility, she was left with limited mobility in her arm. Elodie thought she might never blow glass again.

As she worked on her recovery, a former colleague from the Melting Point suggested she take up flame work, using glass rods and a torch or lamp instead of working in off-hand glass-blowing involving the blow pipe which she could no longer hold." I started small," says Elodie. She worked her way back to making glass art. See Elodie demonstrate flame work.

It was years before she seriously picked up a blow pipe again. When a friend invited Elodie to come assist her in her glass studio, she was able to get in some significant studio time.

By the middle of the following year Elodie had started signing up for trade shows. She was producing works from her friend’s gallery that incorporated glass figures of her flame work into her blown glass pieces which became the first style she was known for.

"That's where the art comes in."

Elodie’s glass-making education began in the world of ceramics and was remarkable in several ways. The caliber of her teachers and mentors was key, and included luminaries like glass artist Marvin Lipofsky and ceramicist Viola Frey. Their teachings included a wise blend of skilled technique, striving to purposefully understand the nature and origins of inspiration, and understanding the business of being a professional studio artist. With this solid foundation she has been able to find her own voice in the medium. According to Elodie, “That’s where the art comes in.”

“I laid a lot of ground work.”

Elodie was also developing as a business woman. “It wasn’t easy,” she says. “I laid a lot of ground work.” As an artist and a creatively minded person, business management was not her natural strength. She had to learn, watch people, take classes. But when she began seriously marketing her work, and her sales took off, she was ready. Five years later, Liquid Light Glass was an established business. Armed with invoices for orders yet to be filled and a track record of previous sales, she went to the bank and got a small business loan that enabled her to purchase the Baca Street Studios in 2000.

Today Liquid Light Glass thrives. A steady stream of eager students flow in an out of her studio/gallery where she offers popular glass blowing classes. Other artists like Cia Thorne are in and out of the studio helping Elodie or creating their own works. She has been listed as one of the top 10 things to do in Santa Fe on Trip Advisor for two years and has a 5-star rating.

Today, Elodie is an active participant in the Santa Fe art market and helps organize community art shows. When she purchased the Baca Street Studios she discovered the area was filled with artists, so she co-founded the Box Street Arts District. They had their first annual art tour during Christmas in 2001 and have now celebrated the 15th year of the holiday tour which takes place the first weekend of December.

“I’m living the dream. “

With her healing behind her and her business enjoying success, Elodie

is able to turn her sights to living her dream of creating art. She continues to blend her life and her work. Bees are a familiar resident in her work, inspired by her own bee hives. She consciously includes bees very literally in her work as a way to further the conversation about the plight of bees, and because she sees them as “...one of the coolest organisms on the planet.”

The work of Elodie Holmes crosses the boundary between the natural world and the realm of imagination, and carries the ancient tradition of glass-making into the new frontier of modern studio glass art in a thrilling and beautiful way.