Thomas Long - b. 1964, resides St. Augustine, FL

Thomas Long first picked up a blowpipe in the primitive hot shop at Texas Tech University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Art. Initially a student of architecture, he was increasingly drawn to sculpture, and eventually completed his BFA degree with a focus on ceramics. He then moved on to glass, a medium which continues to attract his attention and talent. The immediacy, physicality, and choreography inherent in the process, along with the elements of fluidity, color, and transparency in the material continue to fuel his fascination more than 20 years later.

After graduating from Texas Tech in 1989, Thomas lived for two years at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, where he was able to work with many recognized artists in the field and hone his skills. In 1991 he accepted a fellowship to attend the graduate glass program at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. While there he completed a residency at Art Park in New York, and his work was featured in the Corning New Glass Review. After leaving graduate school, he went to work full-time as an assistant to several glass artists, refining his skills further. Returning to Texas in 1994, he continued working to refine his art, and supported himself through glass mosaic and stonework. He then moved to St. Augustine in 1998, where he was able to found his own studio in 2001. At the original Creative Studios, thousands of visitors observed him and his team as they performed the ancient art of glassblowing in the open-air hot shop. His work has been featured in galleries and shows nationwide, and he has garnered attention from local, regional and national media, most recently featured in Coastal Living magazine. In 2006, Thomas moved his operation into his new larger studio, where he continues to enjoy expressing himself through his glass work.

Thomas says his ideas are influenced equally by Gaudi, Bosch, Duchamp, Dr. Seuss, and Mother Nature. His vessels, sculptural pieces, lighting, and installations are all infused with his use of unique and whimsical fluid forms, and daring color combinations. Thomas has always been fascinated with natural geometries and rhythms, and living in a coastal community these last 8 years has brought about the expression of that fascination in his Water Series. The Water Series evolved around an intense color patterning that Thomas developed, expressing a certain harmonic rhythm found pervasively in the natural world. This patterning, in combination with the intense color combinations and fluid forms of the glass, trigger the same reactions one might have when first exposed to an element of nature. When you see a flower for the first time, you are amazed, or “wowed” by it’s color and structure, and then follows a feeling of calm inquisition, much like what you might experience while sitting on the beach passively watching the waves crash on the sand. These same feelings are reproduced when a viewer is first exposed to his new “Liquid Flora” installations. By recreating some of the same structures, colors, and forms of nature in new and different ways, Thomas connects his work to the viewer on an instinctive, or gut level.