Man who once guarded work at museum now has a piece on display there
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ASHEVILLE, NC (WLOS) — When you learn to trust the creative process, sometimes you fall in love with it.
“It is one of the most fascinating materials and one of the frustrating materials as well,” says glass artist Hayden Wilson.
“Once you take the molten material out of the furnace, you can’t take your attention off it for one second until it’s cooled and put into the oven,” says Wilson, the studio director at North Carolina Glass Center in the River Arts District.
Clearly, he’s pretty passionate about glass.
“Yeah I feel like one of the luckiest people alive!” he told News 13.
North Carolina Glass Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to education and exploration. They offer classes to vets, underserved youth, and others in the community.
Wilson’s definitely got a lot to be fired up about lately, because his work is now up in a familiar place, the Asheville Art Museum.
The museum opened last week after a major expansion project.
“I just found myself so frustrated with what’s happening in our world,” he said of his piece on display there. “The title of that piece is the ‘Other Side,’ kind of dealing with the divisiveness that we are dealing with in our country right now.”
It’s part of the Appalachia Now! exhibit featuring local and regional artists.
“I used glass powder to print it on to clear glass panels,” he said, describing the piece. “So I layer them so you get depth, so it kind of tells a story.”
“Just thinking about us and them and how that’s really not going to be good for any of us on either side,” Wilson said of the current public discourse.
While the piece is a reflection of the present, the setting is an important part of his past. As a student at UNC Asheville, Hayden worked as an Asheville Art Museum security guard.
“I had a panic button and a walkie talkie. Basically you watch people and make sure they don’t steal the art or touch the art,” he recalled.
That museum job was an important part of his career, he said.
Life experience is part of the artistic process that can easily be overlooked.
“Helped inform my process as a professional artist,” said Wilson.
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