The Artists: Caleb Siemon and Carmen Salazar met while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design. Siemon later trained for two years with a master glassblower in Italy while Salazar moved to San Francisco and worked with landscape artists and welders. Siemon decided to open a glassblowing studio when he returned to his Orange County home and recruited his old college friend to help him with welding. Romance blossomed amid the early lean years when the pair operated from – and lived in – a trailer in an industrial area of Costa Mesa. Now married with two children, the couple got their big break at a 2001 crafts trade show in Baltimore. Orders for their handblown vessels poured in from galleries and retailers such as Barneys. Today Siemon & Salazar has a small crew and a catalog that includes hand-formed light fixtures. “With glass, there’s always equipment that’s failing,” says Siemon. “It’s a very finicky medium.”
The Artists’ inspiration: We were trying to make lights for our daughter that looked like clouds, so that was part of the inspiration. But we also were playing with manipulating the glass to get different textures. And then we decided to take one of our vessels and make it more structural. When we figured out how to apply the molten glass on the sides, we noticed it also diffused the color. That was very interesting to us. Each bulbous part is hot glass added onto the cylinder base. Once it’s added on, it bulges out at that spot. You do each spot one at a time. It’s really tricky. It took us two years to get the design down. Now it takes our crew of four about an hour to make one. We did make one that was clear and put fish in it. It was a little fish aquarium; you could see them magnified as they swam through the bulbous areas. We gave it to a friend, and the fish are still alive.
