A peek inside Preston Singletary's process

Singletary goes through three stages — glassblowing, design drawing, sandblasting — to achieve his tightly controlled color schemes.

First, he sifts powdered, colored glass — "the consistency of confectioner's sugar" — onto the molten surface of the glass bubble he's blowing. After the powdered glass melts and is assimilated into the surface, he repeats the procedure until he has several layers of colors to work with.

After the glass cools — a two-day process — he does his surface-design work. The cooled glass is wrapped in rubber tape he draws on directly.

He or one of his assistants then cuts out the stencil design with an X-acto blade and, in a process called "sandcarving," sandblasts through the different layers of glass, leaving different colors exposed at different depths.

"Basically with the sandblasting, you're just wearing down the surface of the glass, carving into it, wearing away layers," Singletary says. "It holds up to quite a lot. I can carve entire sections away, cutting away right through the entire wall-thickness of the glass."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com