Glass Blowers in Benicia

Today we went to Benicia to watch some glass blowing by two local artists. The first blower, David Lindsay, was amazing!!! His assistant was quite informative and gave us a play by play as to what David was doing. We learned that cutting hot glass is much like cutting leather. We also were told that glass cools very quickly, therefore David needed to work quickly. When coming out of the 2000 degree fire, the glass becomes liquid form and is similar in consistancy like honey. The colors were vibrant and clear. This studio was Ainsleys favorite, but it was on the smaller side and very warm. Kaley decided that this was not where she wanted to be...so we were able to at least see two pieces created and then left. We ate our picnic lunch under an enormous palm tree on the shore with a great view of the Richmond bridge. The next studio was quite something! The pieces at the Nourot studio were massive. This was Kaley's favorite studio. The most inexpensive piece I could find was $2600.00... Their demonstration room was much larger and they had really good music playing, but the workers were less into talking. We didn't stay very long here. As we were leaving to make our way over to Leapfrog in Emeryville, I spotted a church which I thought we should check out. Much to my delight, it turned out to be St. Dominics of Benicia, established in 1854. We got out of the car and walked around inside the church...yes, the parish was actually open....very different from those here!!! I felt like I was back home. The girls were fascinated with all the candles and images of the Holy Family. We had a really good day today.