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Cheryl Saban creates beautiful, colorful works of art.

Cheryl Saban remembers distinctly the moment she realized she needed to try the complex craft of glass blowing for herself—it was after meeting famed glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. As Saban tells it, all it took for her to fall in love with the medium was a three hour class. The rest, as they say, is history.

Based in Los Angeles, Saban has now been blowing glass for over a decade, though she is constantly honing her craft. By the time she found glass blowing, Saban had already lived a life as a psychologist, musician, author, social activist, and philanthropist. “Since I came into this wonderful craft a little bit later in life, I'm hyper focused on my skills and trying to get better all the time,” she explains. After all, as she sees it, "that's what it takes when you want to be considered really proficient at something. It can take years and years, and years of practice. I'm devoted.”

For her, this devotion takes two forms: practice in her hot shop (the studio where all of the glass blowing magic happens) and studying glass blowing masters on YouTube. Watching the greats like Chihuly, James Mongrain, Lino Tagliapietra, and Nancy Callan at work, Saban considers them her virtual mentors.

Though it was love at first class, Saban's approach to glass blowing as a career took some time to develop. “For me at that time, it was, 'This is exciting, what a great art form,' and it was a hobby,'" she recalls. But Saban soon found herself figuring out ways to get herself to progressively more glass blowing classes. What started out as an activity every couple of weeks soon turned into a sincere study as Saban pursued classes once a week and then as many as three times a week. Somewhere on that journey, the switch flipped from hobbyist to artist.

Eventually, Saban became proficient enough in the art form that she decided to try her hand at selling her pieces on Etsy. Now, her practice includes a creative team that tackles trade shows, wholesale accounts, retail accounts, and PR, enabling Saban to focus her energy on her craft. Saban Glass now produces glasses, vases, carafes and more, all in beautiful colors and designs. While the process for some pieces can be as little as 15 minutes, others take closer to 40.

Each piece begins the same way, by heating up the blow pipes used to blow the glass. After gathering a bit of glass, Saban describes the next step as, “...Like twirling your pipe in honey.” After gathering the glass, it gets rolled on the marver, a flat surface usually made of polished steel, brass, or graphite attached to a table. Once the glass is a bit more solidified, color is added, the glass is heated and marvered again, and a bubble is popped into it - this bubble is, as Saban tells it, “The birth of a piece.”

Different tools come into play during the process, depending on the specific design. An optic mold, for example, helps with creating a twist effect. The rest of the process is a combination of shaping the blob of glass, blowing it, rolling it on the marver, and always, always making sure that everything is kept hot—this is the only way to keep the glass malleable and, therefore, workable. It's an intricate, physical process which Saban describes as "a constant beautiful dance.”

Once the piece of glass begins to take shape, a neckline is put in before a bottom is also created. Next, the top of the piece is opened up, and thus begins the homestretch of the process: heating, reheating, and reheating again. If this last bit seems redundant, don’t forget that it is also necessary. Saban says that their pieces are usually heated and reheated three times, “Just to make sure it’s not going into shock,” before water is put on the spot that they want to break off.

But even as exacting as Saban and her team are with their work, there’s an understanding that they aren’t working towards perfection. The snowflake stamp on each Saban Glass piece belies Saban’s idea that with her glassware, “No matter how similar we’re going to make them, they’re always done by hand, there always is going to be a slight difference." Her pieces, she says, are "perfectly imperfect, that’s how we are as humans. Nothing is perfect, exactly."

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