Joshua Dennard Ann’s Arbor located on the grounds of the Lake City Woman’s Club
Jesse Cullum and Joshua Dennard
MULTIPLE TECHNIQUES: INFINITE POSSIBILITIES Hanging from the ceiling of Halpatter Brewing Company is a spherical chandelier profuse with hand-blown yellow and green speckled glass thorns, embellished with fire-enginered swirls, finished off with welded iron leaves stretching out from the sides, leaving all who encounter it in complete awe. Designed by Joshua Dennard, the founder of Dennard Craftworks, this particular piece encompasses just a fraction of the different types of materials Dennard uses to create unique and functional craftwork for his customers. Dennard became interested in glassblowing in his early 20s, with a particular admiration for the work of Dale Chihuly, a famous glassblower revered for creating a style that arranges glass-blown rods, swirls and other shapes in a clustered, yet intricate way. “It’s like a dance when you’re blowing glass because your whole body has to be in tune with your movements and where you’re going, and you have to pay attention to gravity...and heat and expansion and all of these different variables that you have to deal with in glass blowing,” Dennard says. The process of glassblowing involves taking long, hollow blow rods and heating them to around 2,100 degrees, dipping them into chunks of glass while continuously turning the rod, and reheating the glass in order to stretch it and work it until the desired look and shape is achieved. Dennard compares it to using an old-school honey dipper (like the ones shown in Cheerios commercials). He dips and swirls the rod in the glass with the intent of keeping the glasswork on the rod instead of allowing it to fall on the
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floor. Glassblowers can buy pre-colored glass chunks to work with or, like Dennard, they can start with a clear base, heat it, and then roll it onto tiny bits of colored glass until the two fuse together. Glassblowing, though the most difficult, exciting, and certainly colorful, is only just one of the techniques Dennard uses in his creations. In fact, right down the hall from the chandelier in Halpatter is another of Dennard’s designs: an 80- to 120-pound steel tree suspended from the ceiling, which captures onlookers with its contorted, textured branches wrapped inside twinkling lights. Down the street by the Woman’s Club of Lake City is Ann’s Arbor, an archway dedicated in memory of Ann Darby. The memorial combines Dennard’s masonry work at the base and intricate ironwork featuring vines and dozens of small leaves weaving their way from one side to the other. From steel, aluminum and iron, to bricks, stonework and glass, there aren’t many materials Dennard does not use in order to create something that’s one of a kind and showstopping. “I know that painters can paint beautiful pictures with details using just paint, and that I will never be able to achieve that level of creativity, but for a simple guy like me who’s good with his hands to be able to make a living in the art world from doing something like glassblowing, or glassmaking, or even really artistic masonry work... It’s not just metalwork and ironwork and glasswork, it’s all craft,” Dennard expresses. To see more of Dennard’s work, be sure to check out his website at dennardcraftworks.com.