Eva Goodman is a glass blower and glass artist. Her friend and fellow artist, Willa Van Nostrand, runs Little Bitte Artisanal Cocktails, creating garden-to-glass cocktails.
The two women became friends several years ago, and they have merged their talents into a mutually beneficial partnership.
The full conversation can be found here.
“The alchemy of glass, from liquids to solid, is just amazing,” Goodman says.
She says that making glass is “very dance-like.”
“I wanna know where everything is to set up the choreography,” Goodman says. “When you gather your glass, you have to keep turning so it doesn’t drip off the pipe or turn into a shape that you don’t want.
“Every preliminary step is made with the intention of what the final object is.”
Goodman will place her hot glass on a pipe. To apply color to the glass, she heats it until it is moving enough to apply clear glass. As the glass heats, little spots form.
“That’s how I get my dots,” she says.
After she applies the color, Goodman heats the glass to the size she is seeking. She then flattens the bottom and uses a punty rod.
That is a solid metal rod that is usually tipped with hot glass and then applied to the base of a vessel to hold it while it is being manufactured.
“The punty rod is what you attach the glass to in order to open the lip of the glass,” Goodman says. “When I’m finished, I’ll walk the piece over to the knockoff area and I’ll tap the rod. I’ll take the hot torch and torch the punty mark so it’s not sharp later.
“I’ll use the tongs and I’ll place the glass in the annealing oven until the next day.”
After the glass is made, Goodman hands it off to Van Nostrand, who is comfortable on the farm.
“So, I’m one of these like poly-hyphenate people where I’m an artist, my background is in theater, I’m a mixologist,” Van Nostrand says. “I feel very at home in a place where I can be harvesting all of the ingredients and I’m really creating an experience, not just a drink.
Van Nostrand was at the Osamequin Farm in Seekonk, Massachusetts, where she transformed Goodman’s creation into “a gorgeous cocktail.”
Van Nostrand was working on a drink she calls the Bramble, a blackberry cocktail.
“It’s a really great example of a sour, a cocktail that has base spirit, sweetening agent, maple in our case, and lemon juice,” she says.
On this particular day, Van Nostrand picked fresh blackberries, dahlias, cosmos and fresh mint. She notes that all of them are “edible garnish” and can be included in cocktails and mocktails that she creates.
“Two berries on there, that is the tradition,” she says. “And then I was thinking, why not some fresh blossoming mint?
“And she’s beautiful.”
Van Nostrand says the glass influences what she creates — “a special one-off, hand-blown object.”
“This is art right here,” she says. “So is what’s inside.”
