New cane vase

Here's a vase we blew yesterday afternoon from cane we pulled yesterday. It's 17 1/2" tall and about 8 1/2" wide. It's wonderfully thin and the canes on the very outside that run up and down, are raised up from the surface of the vase, all the way up and down the vase. (which is what we tried to do) In the past, it has been hard for us to do that, because when the vase is heated in the glory hole, the canes have a tendency to flatten and be smooth across the surface of the glass. This is the first time that we didn't have them fused "flat" . Plus, we pretty much kept them straight up and down. They have a tendency to want to twist a little bit. We're excited that we were able to do it!

New Redento in Morning Light!

This Redento Raffinato is 33 3/4" tall and about 11" wide. It's tremendous! Here it is in it's new home in Lawton as the morning sun strikes it. Notice the aurora borealis-like effect with the colors being cast on the white background. Wow!

Here's two

Last night we had a wonderful group come out to the studio for a demo. We made a Redento Raffinato while they watched. It turned out Super Good! After cold working it was 23"1/4" tall. That seems so small now. It used to be really big.

The Murinni Raffinato was blown about 2 months ago and I finally got a picture of it tonight. It stands slightly over 30" tall. The dark colored circles are a beautiful transparent purple with green cane, green color, and white cane surrounding it. I wasn't able to get it lighted properly, but I guess it will have to do.

A New Multi-Media Sculpture by McGahan Signature Glass!

Here are some photos of a new Multi-Media sculpture we just installed this evening in Edmond. The place we installed it is beautiful! The home is going to be on the "Garden Tour" this Saturday. The backyard at this home is simply stupendous! There are places in the backyard where you can stand and think you are way out in the middle of nowhere, when you are in one the nicest neighborhoods in Edmond! It's amazing! You can go to the Oklahoma Horticultural Society's website and find out about tickets for the tour! We are going to give it a whirl ourselves!

Our sculpture is steel, copper, blown glass, with low voltage lighting. It stands about 5 foot, 5 inches tall. We used copper for the "stems" and we fabricated leaves out of sheets of copper. We cut the leaves out, textured them and soldered them to the stems. We then blew the "flowers" or "buds" to go on top of the stems. To give it that beautiful "aged" look, we applied a patina to the copper and "wa-la" beautiful blue-green patina! After we got it all together and "aged", we "electrified" the sculpture with low voltage lighting. Looks almost as neat as the backyard it's in! The "buds" or "flowers" can of course be changed out to different colors for different seasons. White would look pretty cool in the winter. Red, gold, and/or orange could be attractive in the fall. Hail shouldn't be much of an issue unless all "hail" breaks lose and it's a complete "toad strangler". We blew the "buds" a little thicker than we would normally blow something and they are pretty sturdy. We are really pleased with how our first one turned out!

A Peek At The Big Doors To The Glass Studio in Edmond

Here is the lovely and gracious Christi Mitchell standing in front of the new big entrance to the glass studio right on the main drag in Downtown Edmond. These are some HUGE doors! We'll probably keep them open most of the time while we are blowing. Peeps can walk right on in to the studio while they are strolling in the downtown area. This place is gonna be super, super, COOL!

Big News! Huge News!

We are finally realizing more of our dream!! We've been in the pizza business now for over 14 years (This Jan will be 15 years). I blew my first piece of glass 6 years ago this early summer. Shortly after beginning to blow glass, I wanted to decorate our restaurant with the glass. I wanted to blow my own pendant lights, and put all sorts of glass in our restaurant to make it look beautiful. A little while later, we (the fam) decided "How cool would it be if we had our glass blowing studio and restaurant under the same roof. People could come in and eat great Italian food and in the same building watch us create Italian Art. (For centuries, the best blown glass on the planet came out of Murano in Italy) We have been cultivating, developing, and pursuing that quest for over 5 years now. When we came up with the idea, we had never heard of that being done anywhere! Later, we heard of a place in Vermont called Simon Pearce. To the best of our knowledge the only place that comes close to what we have wanted to do is Simon Pearce, who has a restaurant and glass studio on the same grounds. The glass that they blow however seems to be only clear and seem to be primarily functional pieces whereas ours has lots of color and much of what we do I consider to be "art glass" but we blow functional pieces as well. Having said that, it truly seems to be first class in every way! One of these days, I think we will try to make it up there to take a look at it in person. Our hats are off to Simon Pearce!

At times it looked impossible! Starting a glass studio is not easy. Neither is operating a restaurant. (A banker told me one time that the statistics show that less than 2 out of 100 "mom & pop" restaurants that start are still in business five years later!) I don't know the stats on a glass blowing studio. But the good news is, we are now moving toward realizing that dream at a pretty fast pace.

Work has already started on the deconstruction and renovation of our new place! Our new place will house both Italian Jim's and the glass studio together. Right now Italian Jim's occupies about 2400-2500 square feet. Our new place will be 6,500 square feet. We are really excited about it. We are going to be right in downtown Edmond, OK. I will be giving more specifics about the restaurant and the studio later with some photos taken during the construction.

Wait till you see the new "Oklahoma Today" magazine!!!

Actually, don't wait! The newest issue of "Oklahoma Today" magazine is being mailed out now. Some have already received theirs. They featured us twice this issue. Once as one of the top pizza places (Italian Jim's) in Oklahoma and also did a TREMENDOUS write-up with an EXTRAORDINARY photo of some of our latest stuff. I've been told you can't get it in the news stands till about the first of next month, but it could be early. I think we are mentioned on page 77 and featured on page 78? (I'll check those page numbers and make sure that's correct.)

From Oklahoma Symphony Show House in March 2010

This is an old photo. Sorry I was a little late in getting this one posted. We have moved on to some new things and never got around to gettng it posted.

A Beautiful Installation at Warren and Karen's House in Edmond!

We are excited to get the photos taken of the beautiful installation we completed recently. Warren and Karen invited Linda and I over to their house this week for hors d'oeuvres and to view the installation we did for them. (Linda hadn't seen it yet) We had such a good time visiting with them and looking at their extensive backyard/flower garden area. The installation we did for them was in their bathroom around a skylight. They installed extensive lighting to really reveal the majesty of the glass! It is beautiful! Their backyard area is really extraordinary! Just to give you an idea about how wonderful it is, their home is gonna be on the Garden Tour this September. We left enriched by the warm hospitality and with our crew cab pickup back floor area full of starter plants! You can't beat that with a stick! Wonderful people!

2 More Large Redentos Find a Home!

We are proud to have our Redento Raffinatos in such a beautiful home with such nice folks. These Redentos are in Mr. Riley's beautiful home on Winter Creek Golf Course. The home is stunning, both inside and out. The outdoor landscaping is lush with flowers, ground cover and nice design features like a pergola. There are 2 niches are in the front entry area to where the Redentos stand poised in their majestic grace. We're honored to have our glass here.

What we are working on now

We are and have been working for some time now to get 2 or 3 fairly large sets of these Optic Twisted Raffinato Vases. Several of the ones we've already blown have already found a home and we didn't get them in the grouping photographs we wanted to do. I don't really like the setting these are in but when we get more blown I will go to the hassle of getting a nice photo op.The tallest of these is 30" high.

Reviewed in the Oklahoma Gazette

We had a surprise visit from the food editor of the Oklahoma Gazette at our restaurant, Italian Jim's recently, which resulted in an impressive article that just came out in the May 26th, 2010 issue. Read pages 26 and 27. They talked about our food and our blown glass. Thanks Carol and Shannon for the favorable words and great photo!

Here's the link to watch

As I have already mentioned, OETA came out and filmed us blowing glass and put us on a show with some friends of ours who help people with heart problems. It's a great program and well produced. After clicking on the link, click on SOC 205 Full Episode and also the SOC 205 Web Extra: McGahan's on Teamwork.

Click Here for the link.

You can even go on iTunes and find the podcast and download both podcast to you iphone.

Bella Forte featured on OETA HD!

State of Creativity is the program name. Starts at 9:30 pm on Wednesday night at 9:30 pm and Sunday night May 23rd, at 9:30 pm. We are being featured on this program in connection with the LVAD Cardiac care program at Integris Baptist Hospital. Pretty neat program, produced really high quality!

Here's a couple of Raffinatos we just did. One is with murrini and the other a beautiful strong transparent colbalt blue. The one with murrini is our first attempt. The murrini one is about 23 1/2" tall and 11" wide. The blue is 21 1/2" tall and 11" wide and both are about 3 1/2" deep.

Whew!!!

It's been an eventful 3-4 weeks! We have quite a bit of glass in the OKC Symphony Show House. This year it is a 17,000 sq. foot home on the the east side of Lake Overholser. The address is 2550 E. Overholser Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73155. The date is May 1 to May 16, 2010. We've also had a ceiling sculpture with an April 1 deadline. We've been busy blowing glass and fabricating the steel structures for our projects. Ron Licklider with J. Kimball Interiors asked us to do a "obnoxiously large" glass sculpture for the show house that needed to be installed before today. Heap big thanks to Ron for giving us this opportunity to get noticed!! We are making the deadlines so far. The large (about 9' tall) glass scupture is in the "Art Gallery" area. We also have several other pieces of glass in different parts of the home. We have a total of 5 pieces consisting of transparent turquoise, turquoise and white, and white cane pieces in the kitchen utilized by "Domain Interiors". Kristi Forhan and Heidi Smith are the designers and owners of Domain Interiors and did a fabulous job with the kitchen and have been so nice to work with. We also have several of our large art vases we call "Redento Raffinatos" in the Mathis Brother's design area by designers Angela Davidson and Todd Stepp. We may also place another set of beautiful Chartreuse with Gold Ruby accents (a stunning color combination!) within the house. We are so grateful to Angela and Todd for giving us the opportunity to get our Redento Raffinatos looked at by over 15,000 people in the 16 days. I just had my 50th birthday. Mixed feelings about that. Not too happy about being that old, but really happy that I am still having birthdays. Growing older is mucho better than the alternative, if you know what I mean. My son, Micah, honored me greatly! Without my knowledge, he contacted Dante Marioni and bought me a signed goblet from Dante. A DANTE MARIONI SIGNED GOBLET! Did I raise a great son or what! I am literally holding it now as I type this! But then....... But then..... But then...... yes, out of the box came another signed Dante Marioni goblet as a gift from Dante Marioni himself! I now own 2 Dante Marioni Goblets! One a gift from my son and another a gift from "The Man". Whew! I have to stop now. I'm getting too excited and all wore out from thinking about it. I'll post pictures of stuff later.

A Gathering of Redento Raffinatos

Here's the largest group we have been able to get together at one time at one place so far. There are 16 here. We call this collection, "Gathering of the Redeemed". Make sure you double-click the photo, it opens up nice and big.

Some Commissioned Blowls

Bank Installation

These are a couple of photos from an installation we did in the lobby of a bank. The first photo is the mock-up in our studio and the second photo is in the bank lobby. There are a lot of fluorescent lights over head that washes out much of the color. I think they are gonna install some nice spots to shine on it. That will really make the color pop! It was kinda dark in there when took the photo and the photo didn't turn out as well as when we get good lighting on it. We finished the install the first week of December, (I think).