Video Transcript

John:                           
This is John from The Cupboard and CupboardGlassPipes.com and we can find this great piece in the store or online.  Tell us a little bit about this.
 

Eusheen:                     
It's actually a belt buckle, so it's wearable, and it's a pipe also.  It's really convenient like you're at a festival and then nobody has a pipe and then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, wait.  We have a pipe." I actually used one like that before.  I don't really smoke these very often, it's just kind of like wearable item and that's the best thing about it.  I actually skateboard with them on people.  I always worry that they're going to be fragile or something like that, but they're not.  They've very durable.  I've fallen on the ground and slid on them before and they were okay.  I never actually broken one wearing it and I skateboard with one everyday.  I don't know.  I've been making them since 2010.  I went to Japan and I was working with Yoshinori Kondo and he saw that I've made some belt buckles, but they weren't pipes, they were just regular belt buckles.  He's like, "Why don't you push a bowl into that and make it a pipe?" I was like, "Yeah, that's a really good idea." I did it.

John:                           
Some lucky customer is going to buy this and have it in their home and wear it.  What would you tell him? What's a back story? What should they know about what went into making those?

Eusheen:                     
Well, years and years of learning how to make these disk nice and flat, and even and thin, the patterns and what not.  Learning all that stuff.  I don't know.  Other than that, there's a lot of belt buckles on the market, but not that many that are pipes.  They probably should know that they're pretty rare too because I don't make that many of them.  As you can see here I only have like eight of them all together.  Yeah, something like that maybe nine or something like that.  They're rare and a lot of people collect them.  Actually, a lot of people wear one from their collection, but they won't wear them all.  They kind of just keep him aside just to look at.  They're special for sure.

John:                           
Who or what inspired you to get into this business?

Eusheen:                     
That's a good question.  I started in 2000, but I first saw pipes in 97 when I was working at the smoke shop, I turned 18 and as soon as I turned 18 I started applying for this job at the smoke shop trying to get the job and I finally got the job and I worked there for six years.  A couple of years after that, I started blowing glass.  The owner of the shop started a glass shop.  He was making his own products in the house and I started making production work and that's how I got started.  Early on, I learned from Darbi Home.  He's actually here.  I think he has some work here.  He might actually be doing AGE at the other show.  He's one of my main inspirations.

He was teaching a really good friend that I went to high school with me, Mike Luna.  Mike Luna taught me for the first couple of years.  That's where I started my roots and it just kind of been a steady increase.  I've learned from a lot of really good artist like Banjo.  I've been working with Robert Mickelsen recently and worked with a lot of other artist too.  It's just been constant inspiration and progression over the years and just keeping everything going forward.  I'm really grateful and blessed to be a part of this community.  It's been really awesome.

John:                           
You've had a lot of collaborations.  What would you chose as a favorite piece?

Eusheen:                     
As a favorite collaboration piece?

John:                           
Just your favorite piece in general.

Eusheen:                     
Favorite piece in general.  There's been a lot of them.  I don't really know which one I would say would be the favorite piece, but I've done a lot of different collabs.  I did some with Banjo that were really cool.  I helped him work on this one called, "Queen Amidala." It was like Queen Amidala from Star Wars.  There's actually a hack pin that has been made of it.  I made this necklace thing, it took me eight hours just to make this necklace that she was wearing, it's pretty cool.  That was a really fun one.  I there has been so many amazing collabs over the years that's really hard to say.  I did one with Natty.  One of my good friend, his name is Natty.  It was like an up line piece.  It was like this big, it was all rust colors and all of the horns had millies and opals in them.  I did these kind of patterns on all the disks.  It took us over a week to make it.  That was a really sweet piece at the time.  That was back in 2009 I think, so it was a while ago.  Maybe 2010.

John:                           
Are you doing anything new that you haven't done before?

Eusheen:                     
Yeah, recently I did some collaborations with Joe Peters in this case here and they're all like the reef, coral reef theme type pieces.  I basically made this base piece for him to add all of his sea life onto.  We did a couple of different collaborations of that.  I've been doing collaborations with tons of people.  Almost, I would say 80% of the work in these cases right now is all collaboration work, so there's a lot of stuff.  I did a collab with Segan, collab with Laceface, collab with Salt, collab with Steve Sizelove and Robert Mickelsen, collabs with Snick, collab with Punty.  There's so many.  There's more too.  I did some collabs with Elbow that are across away over there, and tons of collabs basically.

John:                           
What's your favorite perk being a glassblower?

Eusheen:                     
Making perks, percolators. (laughs) I would say it's just the community and like the sharing aspect of what the pipe represents really is.  It represents sharing.  The pipe is meant to pass around.  You're like, "Pass the pipe." That's what we do.  That's what our community does and that's why everything is growing so quickly and changing so quickly is because that's what we do is we pass the pipe.  That's what sets us apart from other glass communities like Glass Art Community or other things.  They're a little more secretive about their techniques.  It's just been ripped wide open by the pipe community and we don't care about that stuff.  I teach classes all around the country, even all around the world, traveled all over the place teaching.  We don't charge a lot of money to teach.  Just basically make what we need to make to pay our expenses and what not.  I really enjoy it, it's gratifying to share and to teach people techniques and stuff.  I just keep doing that and that's definitely some of the perks I would say.  There's a lot of perks.  I feel really lucky to be a part of this growing community.  It's really small still and it's just going to keep going up specially with the legalization that's been happening here in Colorado and Washington and what's going to happen in other states after they see how much money we're making by legalizing it.

John:                           
The Cupboard and CupboardGlassPipes.com want to help you stay in touch with your fans.  What social media are you using

Eusheen:                     
I'm on Facebook and Instagram.  Instagram would be Eusheen.  You can see I have tons of photos and I post work all the time on Instagram.  Instagram is probably the best because I can have as many followers as I want to.  On Facebook they limit me to 5,000 followers.  I did start an artist page and I can have as many as I want, but I'm not very good at updating it.  Instagram seems to be the best, it's the purest content.  There's not a lot of ads.  It's simple, it's to the point, you see a video, or a picture, you can like it, there's a like maybe to another website on there or something like that.  It'd say that's the best way for me as an artist.  I don't have a website setup yet because most of my works sells right out of the Kelm pretty much.

The work that I have here, I had to force myself to save it because people are trying to buy it as it was finished.  We're really blessed to be able to do that and we'll just going to keep doing it as much as possible.

John:               
Is there a story behind this piece that we can find in the Cupboard

Eusheen:         
Yeah.  Yeah.  This is a collaboration with Salt.  He also has work here at galleria and he made this eye and this crazy skin that is going on in this like monster guy in the front and then on the back I did this like wig wag section and it's a pipe of course.  It's our first belt buckle collab.  I'm sure we'll hopefully do some more in the future.  We did one other collab piece that's in the other case, it's called "It's okay, we are in Colorado." It's really funny because he's got a joint in this hand and it's a real joint because it's okay we can do that here.

John:               
Some lucky customer is going to take those home and it's going to be part of their collection.  Give them a little back story that they need to know.

Eusheen:         
The story about this.  I don't know it's kind of spontaneous, I was like, "Hey, Luke we should make a belt buckle pipe." And he is like, yeah, let's do it and it was kind of last second because he was getting ready to pack up and go to the next studio and we did it anyways and we did it really late at night.  I think we finished like at 4 in the morning.  I'd say about it.  You got to get them to sign it, it's not signed yet.  Make sure it is signed by Salt and me, both. 

Eusheen:         
You can find some of my work and lots of other great artists work at Cupboard Glass pipes.com.

John:               
One last question.  We all know that glass blowing can be dangerous, have you had any injury experience?

Eusheen:         
Oh yeah.  I've got scars and burns all over myself but I don't mind it, I'm actually a skateboarder, I learned how to fall really well skateboarding.  Anything I've gotten from glass blowing doesn't compare to what I've had skateboarding. 

John:               
THANKS FOR THE GREAT INSIGHTS – GREAT STORIES LIKE THIS ARE WHY WE DO THE CUPBOARDS ARTIST INSIGHTS ON CUPBOARDGLASSPIPES.COM