About The Artist ~Maria Haynie

My name is Maria Elena Haynie. I'm a 31 year old Arizona native. I've been married for 11 years and have 5 wonderful children. I am a Kindergarten school teacher by profession, but I've always had a passion for sculpting. The moment I heard about Lampworking from my friend Jodi Price at Beadworx.com (April 2004), I was certain that this was for me! I knew I would love it and I immediately began imagining the things I could sculpt in the fire! Jodi gave me a couple classes and that was all it took. My wonderful husband believed in my abilities and bought me all the equipment, started building me a kiln, and set up a studio before I even took my first class at The Mesa Arts Center!

I was genetically destined to have a knack for art. My mother is a talented artist and our home was always filled with her latest project from toll painting to porcelain dolls, sewing to beautiful water color paintings (ajoyforever.biz). She has always inspired and encouraged me. I have been sculpting since I was in preschool. One time my sister and I made play dough cheese and put it on a saltine cracker, and as far as I could tell, my dad actually thought it was real and ate it! I think that was the beginning of my love for all sculpting mediums! Although I haven't had too many classes, I have found lots of ways to meet my addiction for sculpting (some pics far below): play dough, modeling clay, Sculpey (polymer clay), clay ceramics, porcelain doll making, silver solder, lost wax, and now… Lampworking!

The Beadery!

~The process of Lampworking is to select and clean the color of glass you will be working with (the glass rod looks like a pencil),
~Then I turn on my oxygen concentrator and propane tank and light my torch (it has a temperature of approx.. 1200 degrees Fahrenheit),
~I slowly introduce the glass to the flame while rotating it for an even melt and when it reaches a honey-like consistency I paint/wipe/glop the glass onto a steel mandrel that has been pre-dipped into a bead release clay (the mandrel is the spot where the bead hole will be after the process),
~Almost lastly, I mush and add to the glass until I've created something fun through a process of heating different areas of the bead to varying degrees of heat (it has to remain hot through the entire process or I risk cracking it),
~Lastly, I place the bead into my mailbox kiln (set at 980 degrees) and I start a program that will cool the beads very slowly, annealing the beads.
~When the glass is cooled, I remove the bead from the mandrel and clean the hole with my Dremel and diamond bit tool.
~It is quite wonderful and amazing to be a part of, sometimes I can't even believe the beads that I make are really from my brain!!! The glass really takes on it's own personality and that's half the fun for me. I hope you enjoyed the tour and come back often to see what has emerged from my studio.

About The Artist's Husband!

There would be no Snozberry Beads without Travis, my DH (darling husband)! So it only seems fair to tell you all about him and his many hidden talents - though, if I tell you how wonderful he is, some of you who live near by might grow to understand his greatness and start asking him for favors! LOL!

Not only is Travis a great amateur mechanic (he's rebuilt numerous car and motorcycle engines), but he can fix just about anything! He is our very own Higgly Town Hero (as my kids put it). He "fixes" and helps people with computer stuff all day, every day as a professional software consultant (ask him the details, my inexperienced computer brain has a difficult time describing his position in few words). Something about school administration software programs, he even went to New Orleans after their recent disaster and helped a school transfer and set up their records at a temporary school site!

Travis built me a wonderful mailbox kiln in June '04. He also remodeled the room out on our patio for my studio. We recycled some kitchen counters and he fit them to the room and mounted them. He refashioned our old entertainment unit for our glass holder and he's also the one who ordered all my torch set up and tools! Now you see how I could never have done any of this without him, he is my hero! I joke all the time that I'm just the bead maker and he is everything else for snozberrybeads.com. If we had credits at the 'end' of the site, his name would be on listed a hundred times to my one or two! We make a great pair though... can't have one without the other! LOL! I married him because he is nice and he married me because we can laugh together! 8 years later we're even more in love than ever and he is still being nice to me and I still make him laugh (even if it's at me)! I love you Travis, thanks for giving me this opportunity to shine!