Jay Musler describes learning to cut glass while working in a factory. Oral history interview with Jay Musler by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:01.

Jay Musler: I’ve worked in a—I guess you could define it as a glass factory. Well, it was a small studio in Marin County [California], and I worked there for about, almost 10 years doing various glassblowing jobs. I learned a skill that not too many people could do at the time. That always certainly interested me. But, at the same time, it was very repetitious, and I didn’t want to do that. [laughs] So on my spare time at work, I would grab a piece of glass, and take it to the saw, and start cutting it up. And this is kind of how I got started making pieces. And my interests shifted when I get kind of good at it. And, ‘Well, maybe I can make this happen.’ And I put some pieces in small craft shows, and they were well received. So, you know, I kind of stuck with that, going that route, which eventually led to me leaving the studio, the small glass studio. And I went off on my own. And then about a year later I get an NEA grant, which really helped me establish my own studio. So that’s what happened. But technique—I basically had to learn it all over again when I became an artist. And it changed so much [laughs] that I can’t really say that technique is a part of my work. I mean, I understand glass, and I’ve become more of a lampworker than anything else. But, I did fabricating, and lots of gluing, and I did painting. I used—all my colors were from oil paints.