Glass artists find niche creating marbles

Chad Parker holds a glass rod to the flame burning at 2,000 degrees.

The 38-year-old glass marble artist inches closer to the fire as he rotates the rod in one hand and manipulates the flame's gas content in another.

“Glass doesn't let you fix mistakes,” he says, watching the scorched glass begin to round into to a sphere. “The trick is to just get them perfect.”

Since 2012, Parker has fashioned more than 1,000 glass marbles in his Fawn glass blowing studio.

Today, like many days before, Parker is creating a monster — “monsterz,” in fact.

That's what the artisan has dubbed the colorful and eccentric faces encased inside his most popular marbles. In a field of glass artistry, in which he says many fail to find a distinguished style, Parker has made his mark with the wacky characters.

“There are so many glass blowers out there, and 80 percent of them are doing the same thing, so it's kind of hard to find your niche,” Parker says. “For me, it was the ‘monsterz' that did it.”

Parker, who runs his family's metal fabrication business Parker Metal Products in Fawn, has always had artisanship in his blood. He first experimented with glass blowing in recreational lessons in 2009 and eventually stumbled upon a love of marbles three years later.

“I didn't really know what I wanted to do with glass blowing until I made my first marble — and then I knew,” Parker says. “Anything can happen inside of a marble, and that's what amazes me.”

For Parker, the spheres of possibilities have led to a good deal of attention.

Just four years since discovering the hobby, his marbles have been exposed to a global audience in The Flow and Glass Line magazines, as well as displayed at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Arts Festival and other showcases across the country.

“I am completely blown away by the attention my glass gets every day,” says Parker, whose work is followed by more than 6,000 people on social media. “I never would have imagined anyone would want my stuff, let alone pay good money for and collect them.”

Parker's marbles are regularly purchased by collectors from Pittsburgh to Japan for prices ranging from $75 to $450. His quasi-business has begun to earn him more money than his day job.

“It started out as just a hobby,” he says, “but's it's turned into something much bigger.”

Back in his 600-square-foot studio trailer, Parker prepares to create a marble using what he calls a compression technique.

“A lot of people don't understand that every marble is just one chunk of solid glass,” he says. “They think that there is something inside the marble that's encased by the glass.”

Each marble begins as a segment of a glass rod, which he melts, flattens and rounds before staining the sphere by melting colored glass rods. He then uses gravity to cause the melted colored glass to flow inside the marble, eventually giving the encased figure a 3-D appearance.

A single marble can require anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours of sweltering labor, a process that Parker says is ultimately made worthwhile by the joy his marbles bring to fans.

“My slogan has always been, ‘It's all about the smiles,'” he says.

On July 23, Parker will join hundreds of marble artists around the world by hiding some of his creations in the “World's Biggest Marble Hunt.” People around Western Pennsylvania will be able to acquire Parker's glass treasures, which he has hidden in locations from Pittsburgh to Butler.

In past years, Parker has donated his marbles to fundraising auctions for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank's Kids Summer Hunger program and the Animal Protectors of Allegheny Valley.

For Parker, the grinning “monsterz” have helped put smiles on the faces of many.

“I love when people see my monsterz and smile, especially when children see them and I see the big smile that it puts on their face,” he says. “That's priceless.”

Matthew Zabierek is a Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached at mzabierek@tribweb.com.