Filomena Smoła

She’s 25 years old and already has a portfolio filled with accolades: a win at the 2020 International Biennale of Glass in Sofia, a distinction from the American Glass Society two years later, two grants from the New York organisation Urban Glass, and a scholarship from Kent State University, where she teaches glassblowing. If there’s a stereotype of what an industrial glassworker looks like, Filomena Smoła is its polar opposite. She’s very stylish with her long, flowy hair, white embroidered shirt, and custom jewelry, and looks far too dainty to be spending all day in the heat of the glassworks. But let’s not be fooled by appearances.

Maja von Horn: You’re one of the few women in Poland who not only designs glass objects, but also actually makes them herself. Your pieces are ethereal, but work at the glassworks is physically difficult labor, in extremely high temperatures. Are you now immune to the heat?

Filomena Smoła: There’s really no one in Poland who both designs and physically works with glass. Designers will sometimes make an appearance at the glassworks, say something to the glassworker, maybe lightly handle the glass, but they don’t engage in the process from beginning to end. There’s a lot of physicality in the work, but there’s also space for intimacy – how you interact with the material is very sensual. There’s also an element of struggle, because the material resists you; it’s not open to cooperation. You can manipulate it; it gives you a certain fluidity and the space to express yourself, but to be able to do that, you have to fight the material, overpower it, and push its boundaries.

M. v. H.: What’s the biggest challenge in this process?

F. S.: Glass is hot liquid; it drips, a bit like honey. You scoop it with a tool called a punty, which you have to keep rotating because if you stop, everything will run down off of it. You have to always be in control of your material. The kiln can get as hot as 1500 degrees Celsius – you open it and see pure heat. Some people give up right then and there. You have to get close to dip the punty, remain by the furnace and withstand the heat. The temperature in the room can reach 40 degrees Celsius. Your entire body is engaged. You get hot, your skin gets hot. You have to make quick decisions because glass reacts to everything: temperature, weather, and, above all, touch. Adrenaline is always coursing through you. You don’t form the glass with your bare hand, but through a wet newspaper. It’s perhaps hard to believe, but it’s the best tool. The paper absorbs water, so it doesn’t burn and stays slippery. It’s incredible that such a thin layer separates 1500 degrees Celsius from your hand.

M. v. H.: In recordings you post on Instagram, you don’t wear any protective gear. You look very stylish by the kiln.

F. S.: My body has gotten used to these conditions. Sometimes, when I’m shaping a large layer of glass, I put on special protective sleeves. When I was a child, I was diagnosed with sensory dysfunction. It started with an acute need to move my body. I had to feel my own muscles, so my parents naturally pushed me into sports, walks, swimming. I needed constant stimulation to feel my body better, to know its boundaries, and to be aware of where there was hunger or dissatisfaction. All that movement and physical contact gradually helped me gain muscle memory, which my body strongly registers. It puts me in sync and leads to me having a deeper awareness of my body. Working at the glassworks, I am completely in tune with myself.

M. v. H.: After taking the punty out of the kiln comes the moment of blowing into the glass: what do you feel then?

F. S.: My grandfather was a saxophone player, and my dad plays the trumpet. I recently realised that it’s the same blowing motion as in glasswork. They made music, their blowing registered as sound, while mine is expressed in the object, in the glass, in the physical creation. I treat it as a form of meditation. I devote my entire attention to making the piece, to prevailing over the material. But the process is also extreme, sometimes even painful. The line between its soothing effect and the physical effort it requires becomes blurry.

M. v. H.: How often does a piece that you’ve thought you’ve completed break and crumble?

F. S.: All the time. I was blowing before our meeting today. It was a pretty successful day, but I lost one object entirely, and I had to accept the loss. All it takes is shifting the punty a bit too energetically, and the glass falls apart because it’s cold and fragile. Or it starts cracking because the temperature fell too much, or because a movement was too sudden.

M. v. H.: Isn’t this frustrating?

F. S.: Working with glass taught me enormous humility. Not everyone can work with this material; some people quickly get angry, and you need patience. When one piece falls apart, you can’t break down; you need to keep going. You think, "I understand, today you needed to shatter. We will come back, try again.” There are days when all the pieces end up on the floor.

M. v. H.: Did you move to the United States because in Poland the artist isn’t allowed to do the physical part of the work?

F. S.: Yes. There’s a movement in the US that emerged a long time ago, in the 1960s – the Studio Glass Movement. The community formed as an alternative to industrial, mass production of glass. Some of those pioneers created the first glass studio in Ohio, where I live now. Later, they launched the first school of glasswork. They built everything from the ground up. At first, they worked with ceramicists, because they also used kilns, but later they discovered an independent process only for glass. This was their main goal: To be independent from the glassworker, to be able to do the entire process on their own, all through trial and error, experimenting until they get to the final product.

M. v. H.: Before you left Poland, you studied painting in Toruń.

F. S.: I’m originally from Gdańsk but moved to Toruń to study painting. They had an elective course on the spatial architecture of glass. At first, I was resistant, because we were making stained glass, which is stiff and flat, and I was always drawn to dimensionality; movement was part of my expression. In painting, I gravitated toward “action painting” – I worked on large canvases; I didn’t like to pick at small-scale pieces– I preferred momentum. Stained glass is not my thing, but I had to pass the class. Thankfully, my professor noticed some potential in me, a curious student who wanted to discover all of the secrets of glasswork. We had a good relationship. At the university, we had a special kiln for fusing [layers of glass], which I started experimenting with. I could hang out in the studio for 24 hours a day to witness every stage of the process – how the glass bends, how a dimensional object emerges from a flat pane. I hadn’t been to the glassworks yet, but I knew I could do this for the rest of my life.

M. v. H.: You transferred to the department of glass art and design at Wrocław’s Fine Arts Academy. Is that where you learned the profession?

F. S.: In Wrocław, I also kept up with painting – I double majored. But I was greatly disappointed during my first year. We had two classes, artistic glassware and functional glassware. When I was applying, I was certain that during the functional glassware class I’d be able to make the pieces myself during the functional glassware class – it was unfathomable that someone would be doing it for me! But when I asked about realising my sketches, I found out that a glassworker comes and does all the work for us, we’re only responsible for the design. That broke my heart. I realised that if I wanted to work at the glassworks, I would have to leave the country.

M. v. H.: Where do you find motifs for your work?

F. S.: Right now, I’m going through a period of going back to my roots. I’m referring to my adolescence, to the world that shaped my aesthetic sensibilities, the objects I surrounded myself with, how my parents raised me, my lived environment, and how I experienced nature. I try to capture aesthetic and sensual impressions from these recollections. I have beautiful memories of the Low Beskid mountains, where my parents have a house. It’s now a vacation home because they live in Gdańsk, but that’s where my father’s ancestors come from, and I feel very close to this area. To talk about these strongly rooted memories in my glasswork, I filter them through my sensibility today.

M. v. H.: You grew up in the Lemko region [an area in southern Poland which is home to the Lemko ethnic minority]?

F. S.: It was very important for my parents to show us the world, so they dragged us to many places. We lived in France, in the Bieszczady mountains, and then we moved to the Low Beskid area, right by the Slovak border. They dreamed of having a home there – a real Lemko cottage that preserved the spirit of an older time. They drove around the area and looked for the right place to return to their roots. Finally, they found the very last building in the village, on the complete outskirts. It was the only home that survived the region’s tumultuous history, and so did all of its historical elements – stones, planks that someone carved the year the house was constructed. They didn’t want to change anything; with time, they only expanded it just enough to be livable. Only four years ago did they install a shower and toilet. Before, everything was outside; to bathe, you had to pour hot water on yourself on the porch.

M. v. H.: Maybe this is why you can handle high temperatures so well?

F. S.: It’s possible! These were spartan conditions, but my parents didn’t care. For them, it was important that we lived as one with history and nature. They didn’t feel a need to modernise. To bathe, you’d also go down to the river. For the first five years we lived there, we didn’t have a refrigerator – in the winter we kept our food cool in the vestibule or the cellar.

M. v. H.: Do you have a big family?

F. S.: I have two sisters and a brother.

M. v. H.: Four kids without a fridge and bathroom, impressive.

F. S.: This was their passion. They rejected the mainstream lifestyle and parenting ways. They wanted to show us the world from its sensitive, wild side, nurturing a deep connection with nature, our ancestors, and history. That motivation helped them manage.

M. v. H.: So when you’re looking for an idea for a form, you go back to your childhood.

F. S.: I look in my memories for the moments that made me pause and influenced my visual language and identity. All the items in that house came from various markets my parents went to, or from people in the village. Some were left by the previous owners. Every object held a hidden history. These things strongly resonated with me. We also attended an Orthodox church, and even though my parents were not Orthodox Christians, they respected the culture that surrounded us very much. These were beautiful experiences, I loved the smell, the atmosphere, the moisture in the air. It was a completely different environment. I remember, for instance, a shape carved into the bench, or a wooden wall hanging from which were small items. I want to preserve this and translate it into the language of my art.

M. v. H.: Are the items that you make purely art objects, or are they functional art?

F. S.: At first, I thought that they were simply sculptures. But following my studies in Wrocław, I started becoming more open to functional art, because of the enormous amount of various functional objects I recalled from my own life, and because of the associated sensory memories, such as the act of grabbing a mug or a flower vase at my grandmother’s. I would like to cross the boundaries of functionality, so that a wine glass can be a receptacle for the liquid and a work of art. Sometimes an object may look like a flower vase, but inside it are holes interwoven with lace. You can’t pour water into it, yet it’s still a vase – just not strictly functional. I found a workshop in Ohio specialising in different kinds of lacework and ordered a design for this project. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use my grandmother’s lace, which she produced in copious amounts. This memory is very important to me, so I incorporated it into my glasswork.

M. v. H.: You even make rings out of glass. Does one wrong move of the wearer’s hand mean their end?

F. S.: Not necessarily. I make them from borosilicate glass, so they are very durable. Of course, you shouldn’t do the dishes in them, and you have to be careful when you’re wearing them. They won’t give you full freedom of movement, but they will give you focus – you have to be mindful of your hand and have more awareness in everything you do. Mindfulness is extremely important in the process of glassblowing. I came up with the idea of making rings because they are objects that let me convey to the other person my own experience of the process.

M. v. H.: What are you working on now?

F. S.: I am continuing my identity explorations. It’s an evolving thing. I made my last project in clear glass, and now I’m experimenting with color, looking for new forms and ways to achieve greater sharpness. In my earlier works, I was very delicate and self-soothing, and now I’m trying to find a form rooted in the internal conflicts that accompany us in life.

M. v. H.: I have to ask you about your beautiful name. Does having a unique name give you a larger sense of uniqueness?

F. S.: At first, I felt very ashamed of it. At school, I had nowhere to hide; everyone knew I was Filomena. Later, my dad told me that I was named after my great-grandmother, who was a wonderful grandmother to him. She comforted him when he was a child, made his life richer, helped him notice the beauty around him, and showed him life from her perspective. He spoke about how in her arms he could escape the chaos at home. That’s when I started identifying with the name, and today I’m proud to share a name with my great-grandmother Filomena. I feel so close to her that it might even come through in my work.