Flo Perkins talks about being a woman in a male-centric glass world. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:10.

Flo Perkins: Well, one of the things, I mean, I used to say if I was—it would be very hard to get into this when I was older, because when I was young, it was, ‘Hang out in the glass’—honestly—‘in the glass studio drinking beer and blowing glass till all hours of the night.’ Pilchuck used to be 24/7. And so it was a really interesting situation of hanging out, and watching, and trying. There were no videos. Later when I went to Lino’s [Tagliapietra] class. I was like, ‘How do you guys all know how to do this so well? Cause they look at videos. We didn’t have that. It was like you had to be there and see somebody do it, and ask them about it, and these men can’t say a word in concept in sequence to tell you how they’re doing something. That’s the other thing, it’s really interesting. The men are so nonverbal about doing this. And they go, ‘You just have to watch and try,’ you know? And it was—and so when I got older I was really trying to explain to people what I was doing, why, and how it worked and this and that, but the guys really don’t approach it that way. It’s very funny. It’s interesting.