By Amy Huang & Janice Wu, Summer 2025 Bloomberg Arts Internship (BAI) Education Interns
As the monthly Hot Glass Hangout hosted here at UrbanGlass approaches, we had the pleasure of interviewing two of the featured artists to get to know more about them and their glass art stories. Han Duong, a flameworking glass artist based in Brooklyn, continues her practice at the studio creating adorable, charming animal figurines and jewelry for her brand Sky Candy. Hannah Martin, working under the artist name HAN MADE, works with yarn and glass to create playful and whimsical accessories and jewelry. They are both graduates of the Fall 2022 Bead Project!
We had an amazing conversation about their journeys to becoming glass artists, their goals, experiences, and just getting to know them. Check out our interview below and come see them in action at the torch on Friday, July 25th from 6-8 PM at UrbanGlass! RSVP for free here.
How did you guys decide to become glass artists? Did you start at UrbanGlass or were you always interested in this medium?
HANNAH MARTIN My partner is a glassblower and they introduced me the material in the fall
of 2021, and it was around the same time they had just started working at UrbanGlass. They encouraged me to apply to the Bead Project. I was pretty new to the city and couldn't really afford any sort of artistic expression, but I was just dying to get my hands on something. That’s when they helped me integrate into the community of UrbanGlass.
That spring, I applied for the Bead project, and I did not get accepted the first time around. After that, I signed up for a class, and got into bead making. I honestly loved that way more than the hot shop; It was way more tangible and easier for me to approach. I reapplied for the Bead Project in the Fall of 2022 and was accepted then, and that was my introduction to glass.
HAN DUONG I also did the Bead Project; I was in the same cohort semester as Hannah and that's how we met. I moved to Brooklyn around July of 2022 and at that time I had a job that I don't have anymore. My partner, who was living with me, was looking for work, so I decided to be really nice and look for jobs in the Brooklyn area that I thought that he might like. He’s also an artsy person, so I was looking particularly at art studios in Brooklyn, thinking that it would be really awesome to be a studio assistant or technician. It’s so funny that our partners in a way led us to the same place.
I stumbled across UrbanGlass and I discovered the Bead Project. It was for women, and I was like, oh, this is for me, not really for him. I applied and I was thinking this would be something I could do in my free time. The Bead Project at that time was on the weekends, so I could do that in conjunction with my full-time job. I was really fortunately accepted into the program that semester.
What are your inspirations in your glass work? Favorite artists or style?
HANNAH Hmm, that's a good question. I think a lot of my inspiration comes from my mom's aesthetic. Growing up, she loved to thrift everything and used wallpaper to decorate in this kind of style that's now making a comeback as this cottagecore theme. That has inspired so much of my jewelry and the things that I make are so reminiscent of the art that my mom chose growing up, that sort of vintage-y style.
The first artist I can think of is Goldie Poblador. She is INCREDIBLE. She’s taught here at UrbanGlass and had a window gallery show before I even started working with glass. She makes these beautiful femme bodies that are also flowers, and it's all based in folklore and it's just awesome. Taking her class really helped me get from point A to point B with borosilicate glass. She is a huge inspiration for me, her aesthetic is incredible and I love her.
HAN I do feel like I also pulled a lot from my mother, but not as much in her aesthetic.
She tries to be very traditional and old money and I feel like I'm the antithesis of that. Growing up, I would work in her nail salon with her a lot or just be around her in the nail salon, which gave me a lot of free time. I could look at all the polishes, look at all the colors, and play with my nails. I think that really helped me develop my fine motor skills. Because of that, I've always been into doing very small art with my hands. My style of art definitely pulls a lot from Kawaii, anime and Sanrio. If you look at a lot of my animal figurines, they're very similar to Hello Kitty. I just really like cute things.
And then some artists, if we're speaking strictly on glass artists, The first one is Jessica Tsai. She makes hyper realistic glass art of bugs and she even made a piece of raw chicken that was insanely realistic. It was just unreal to say that that was made from glass.
The one who expanded my mindset to what I could make and the scale I could make things was Sibelle Yuksek. She makes hollow female figures and she emphasizes them being graceful and beautiful.
Another glass artist that I really love, she was on season one of Blown Away. Not that that's her namesake or anything, but her name is Momoko Schafer and I remember she had just stumbled across my market. She was like, “Oh this is all so cute, you know a lot of times when you look at glass art it's not really that cute. It may look like something, but it’s not often that it has a feminine touch to it.” This is because the industry has mainly been white male dominated for the last couple centuries. I think hearing that from her, also continuing to see her art become a little cuter, is just so inspiring to understand that like, oh there are people out there who enjoy this kind of thing and I should continue making it too.
What are some of your favorite glass pieces you’ve made?
HANNAH I make these teeth, I’m actually wearing them right now [Ed note: her earrings!], and I have such a special connection to them. It’s basically my entire brand now. I left the Bead Project with these skills, but it still takes a lot of effort to grow, so I had decided to focus on making teeth. One, because I wanted to be the Tooth Fairy for Halloween, but also just because my partner is a glassblower and the piece of advice they’d always give me was, “repetition is key.” So I was like, let me just make all these teeth to make a huge body sculpt or body piece with them. I think I made over 40 or 50 glass teeth beads for it in the flame shop, and I just got so attached to them. It's so incredible to have something that is tangible and also a visual representation of how you can grow as an artist on your own. Obviously, nothing is done on your own in this community, though. You rely on all of the people or the community, but it was just me, the teeth, and the sessions.
I also made these lemon blossom flowers out of borosilicate that I really love, which I made for a [Marc Jacobs] campaign. I quit my full-time job in December of 2023. I was like, “let me just do the glass thing for a second” and then I was going to go travel and then come back and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Right in the new year, I got this job for a perfume campaign and decided to make all these glass pieces. One of those things was the lemon blossom flower and after that, I continued to do those. That flower specifically was a realization that, “oh my gosh, I'm growing so much with this material!”
HAN My favorite soft glass pieces that I make are my angel bunnies and
bears. They are the ones I make the most of and have a lot of iterations of. I went from just having plain bunnies to doing bunnies with wings and bunnies with devil horns and with flower hats.
My favorite borosilicate piece has been this hand ring that I've made. It’s a ring that looks like it's a hand gripping my finger. I mostly love it because I modeled it after my own hand, so I'm always like, hey, that's my hand. But also because it is very structurally sound. It’s broken maybe twice, but I wear it quite often and it's very sturdy so I think that’s a testament to my growth in the craft that glass is very strong, especially when you make it correctly and treat it in the right way. It can last you forever and it is a lot stronger than you think. People always think it's super fragile, but honestly, if you anneal it, if you're pulling it in the right directions, if you're not stressing it out too much, it can last through drops on a hard floor.
I don't work with hollow glass that often, but I took a plasma class back in January. The class was hollow borosilicate sculpting with plasma pumping to it. I made two things in that class, but my favorite is an orb with one of my angel bunnies inside of it, and then there's plasma that glows around it.
What are some of the goals you have for the future related to your art and career?
HANNAH Financially, it would be great to only be doing glass art and have sales that are outside of just my friends, family and the UrbanGlass network. Before moving to New York, I never imagined being able to make art and representing it in different ways, so I really want to start doing things that separate my art from money and being able to balance those two things. Working or having an exhibition in a gallery would be amazing, showing my art to more people and making more connections.
I also want to eventually go back to school specifically for glass art. I don’t really know what that looks like yet since it’s a decision I just made.
I think teaching is the most valuable part of this material because it is such a niche community and is a weird material to get into. I definitely want to become a teacher at some point. The history of bead making and glass in general is just through teaching and knowing somebody to get into it. Teaching is so important since it can really change somebody’s life.
HAN I definitely feel similarly in certain ways, like I do wish that one day I would be able to sustain myself on just my glass practice, whether it be through teaching or selling my creations. I definitely also want to keep getting better at glass making and connect with more glass artists to expand my skillset.
A big goal of mine is having my own studio space. I don’t really know if I can do it in New York, since it’s just really hard to find a rental space and it’s very expensive. Having my own studio would allow me to have uninterrupted time to make as I want. That’s the struggle I have with renter’s studios; although it’s great having the community, time limitations make it such a struggle for me to really get into the groove and make what I need or want to make.
What challenges have you experienced in your glass making career and education/glass classes?
HAN I think my struggle currently is the lack of time. Already, we live in a city where everyone is just on the move, and then you have to account for things like travel time. When you rent out a studio, you have to account for setting up your station and getting in the zone. I was doing part-time work last year, which allowed me more accessibility to be working in the studio. But now that I'm full time I can't do glass as often. Even when I try to go out to do glass on the weekends, it’s my only free time.
People always say, in the glass world and our community, there's always energy that you're putting into the glass. Sometimes I feel like the energy that I have is really lackluster. I feel like my glass isn't as wonderful as it used to be because it’s like a second job in a way.
I definitely want to get back to having the fullest of my creativity, so I’m thinking about stepping back from selling so much just so I can really take the time to hone in on skills and make things for me as opposed to churning out stuff to make a quick dollar.
HANNAH Yeah, time and money is also a struggle for me, but to add something else to that,
I think UrbanGlass has an incredible community and we do have a lot of really wonderful
flameworkers in the shop upstairs. But, it's still limited on the knowledge that is in the flame shop specifically.
I've struggled to learn outside of Gigi and Maria, who are like the moms of the flame shop [Ed note: Ghislaine Sabiti is the Bead Project Director and Maria Aroche is an alum and longtime TA for the program]. I wish we just had more artists renting out of the studio, but most flame shops are full-time and really incredible flameworkers have their own studio. I feel kind of stagnant with learning. It's not a reflection of the studio, it's a reflection of just the general nature of flameworking.
What’s going to happen at this month’s Hot Glass Hangout? What is it like prepping for it?
HANNAH We’re going to be working with Eli Kan, and we’re basically going to make a huge charm necklace. We’ll each make our own pendants and then hot seal them onto the huge chain necklace. [Ed. note: Curious? Come see them do it in real time on July 25th from 6-8 PM!!!]
HAN It’s mostly just individual prep work. We all make our own pieces to display for the show and then come together during the demonstration to collaborate and put on a show putting the final glass piece together. Usually, flameworking is a solitary technique and you don’t have a partner you’re constantly working with, like in the hot shop [glassblowing].
What did you do at the New York poetry festival in Governors island? How did it go?
HANNAH It was our first time launching this collective with another artist, Julia Aneiro, who is also a flame worker here. We had wanted to do it last year but we were unemployed and broke so we decided to wait till we have money.
HAN Also, I think we had started talking about it at the end of the summer when the holidays were starting. Holiday markets are all really hard to get into so we just weren't prepared for that.
HANNAH Han and I both individually got invited to do Poetry Fest and you know, we're both glass jewelry artists, and we were like this is stupid. We're gonna be competing. Not actually competing–
HAN I think I was like, I got into PoFes, and you said that you got into PoFes. So then you go, why don't we do it together? And I was like, that's a great idea! Because we just thought about doing this collective last year. This is less pressure than those other markets that are geared specifically towards craft markets where we may have even more competition. But this was chill since the festival wasn’t dedicated to vendors.
HANNAH Yeah, very chill. We learned a lot, a lot of people came out to support and we got a lot of really good feedback. It was definitely a lot of work, a lot of money to invest on the front end to get it launched, because the collective is not just going to be the charm bar. We did the charm bar where you can come in, each one of us made beads and a catalog with all the beads and then people could come up and make their own jewelry essentially. It's also an aesthetic display. All the branding materials, our logos; it was a big part of it and all made out of glass, which was awesome.
It was a lot to put together, so once we finally got to the market it was like okay, we can just chill and this is so much more fun, and it was. We've definitely had to work out a little bit of kinks throughout, but the festival itself wasn't really a place where people were going to shop. It just happened to have vendors. So we weren't slammed, which I think gave us the opportunity to learn and figure out our flow because we had the time to.
HAN Yeah, I was saying every 30 minutes we're learning something new.
HANNAH It was a lot of fun and like we were saying earlier, it's hard to collaborate in the flame shop. This was really a fun way to make a brand separate from our own, but also have our voices in it. We're going to continue doing the charm bar, but then of course expanding
on the collective and making more things, there's more power with more people so we're gonna try bigger projects.
QUESTIONS FOR HAN
What schools did you go to? Were you originally interested in the arts/glass?
I'm originally from Connecticut. I went to public school. The closest I've gotten to doing something with art, at least in high school, was when I did National Art Honor Society. In college, I was trying to do fashion because while living in a big city I realized I love fashion. Instead of being expressive with material art like painting or drawing, I would do beauty art. I did a lot of makeup. I’d dye my hair all the time, do my nails, and just the way I dressed was very colorful.
I went to St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens, I remember sophomore year I had seen wire used for making earrings, and I was like oh, I could definitely make that. So I started making wire shaped earrings and some of my friends at that time wanted to buy them for me. I charged very little for them since I didn’t know if they were even good enough to sell.
My major was communications. I have had no relation to art, and I think it comes from being a first-generation Asian-American. Your parents really push you so hard to do STEM, and that anything else will not make you money. When coming to America, they had the expectation that they would have more money. But it's so funny, because you could just live normally, not be rich, and you'd still be fine. But yeah, it wasn't until I came to New York City and did the bead Project that I really recognized and reflected on myself that I am good at art and that I should continue doing it.
I noticed a lot of your glass art includes animals, specifically bunnies. Is there any specific reason why?
I started making bunnies because we finished the Bead Project in December of 2022, and 2023 was the year of the rabbit, so I wanted to do a Lunar New Year celebration collection. Miffy was really trendy. I mean, she's really trendy now.
I think that I did the bunny because it was something that was so challenging, and it was encouraging hearing people be like, “Wow, how did you do the ears?” Because doing things like extending off the glass can be very dangerous, not in the sense that it'll be dangerous to you, but dangerous as in it might crack the glass, and I did get a lot of cracked ears back then. But once I was able to do the bunnies, everything else was way easier. Bear ears were so easy, it's just two little dots, but cat ears were actually hard for a while because it's hard to make glass pointy. I've since learned though.
After the Lunar New Year happened, I kept making the bunnies, kept making them cuter, and making them in different iterations. I just like [that] little figures and animal characters are easier to do than people.Thank you, Miffy.
QUESTIONS FOR HANNAH
How do you incorporate your expertise in anthropology into your art?
I grew up in the South, where it was very conservative. Everyone was getting married young and having babies young there. Studying anthropology was the first time in my life where I realized that there is no one way to live life or to define anything. It’s all up to your culture, beliefs and background. It made me much more empathetic and understanding and helped me move on from the traditional values that I grew up with. I don’t really know how it translates into my glass art but it definitely gave me the confidence to pursue art.
How does crochet (yarn) and glass work well together despite their differences?
Glass is an in between material when you’re working with it; it can be soft and fluid or rigid. It has this sort of flow that I would say textile art also has.
We’re able to capture movement and the glass’s kinetic energy through the shapes it makes when it’s hot, and after it’s annealed and the shape is set. That in combination with textile art can make I think some of the most beautiful pieces in the world.
It’s the fact that they are so different that make them complement each other so well. They work so well on their own, but when combined, they produce such a unique and amazing look.
How did you get your name out there? Specifically with your Marc Jacobs collab?
I really relied on the community here in UrbanGlass. UrbanGlass has a program where people can reach out for commissions. I have been making fruits and flowers for a second, and the photographer reached out looking for someone who could make them.
Being present here is really important here. Connecting, sharing, talking with everyone, all those things. I think that just being really involved and luckily, having great friends and a partner who are in the same field, got me to where I am now. It definitely wasn't what I did, but like a collective effort of the entire community and its resources.