When glassblower Bill Van Tassel sets out to create a piece of art and bring an idea to life, he said he often finds that the glass “takes on a life of its own.”

“Once you get used to it and get comfortable with it, it’s kind of like a dance,” he said of the glassblowing process.

Van Tassel, who has lived in Butler County for eight years and owns Evolution Glassworks, said the allure lies in “taming” a piece of glass heated to 2,150 degrees until it has the consistency of honey.

Van Tassel has a knack for intimidating hobbies, such as mountain biking, scuba diving and mountaintop camping. He moved to Morgantown from Akron, Ohio, to escape the hassles of city life, and he said Kentucky features a more laid-back lifestyle with a lot to do.

Glassblowing became a passion after his girlfriend paid for a weekend paperweight workshop at the Indianapolis Art Center in 2002. “Now I make everything – bowls, vases, anything blown,” he said.

The process for creating a piece of glass art is both fluid and methodical, Van Tassel said. He may start out intending to create a tall vase only to end up with a short, squatty bowl. However, the flowing glass pieces Van Tassel creates belies the methodical process he goes through.

The process begins with a crucible furnace that heats the glass until it’s molten. A 5-foot-long blowpipe is also used to make the glass into a bubble and repeated to layer the glass. A second furnace, called a glory hole, allows the artist to shape the piece before it’s placed in a kiln to slowly cool.

“There is a finite time that you can work with it before it’ll finally just explode and fall off the pipe,” said Van Tassel, adding that the whole process takes about 45 minutes.

Van Tassel also enjoys sharing his passion with others.

“I love to teach classes. One of my favorite things to do is get people into glass,” he said.

Unfortunately, his current job with Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacturer in Indiana, doesn’t give him much time to teach classes and fire up furnaces. He’s currently on a hiatus from glassblowing.

Western Kentucky University art professor Kristina Arnold said she met Van Tassel at an arts fair on Bowling Green’s Fountain Square. She is currently overseas and could only comment through email.

“I had recently begun to do some furnace blown glass and hadn’t seen anyone in the Bowling Green area working in blown glass,” she said. “Glass is exciting, and when students learned that he was close, many wanted to go and see the process.”

She described glass as a medium that works especially well with light.

“Bill has a great eye for color so he is really able to capture and make use of this attribute and make some beautiful things,” she said.

Lynn O’Keefe, owner and director of Gallery 916 in Bowling Green, said she admires Van Tassel’s inventiveness.

“What attracted me to Bill’s work was that each piece was unique and individual not only in shape but in color,” she said.

O’Keefe helped Van Tassel sell some of his work and said she appreciates his passion and commitment to honing his craft.

“He loved it, and he was gonna find a way to make it happen,” she said.

— An Amplifier article by Ronnie Jaggers contributed to this story.

— For more information on Van Tassel, visit http://evolutionglassworks.com/webhostingpad/Artists.html.

— Follow education and general assignment reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter at twitter.com/aaron_muddbgdn or visit bgdailynews.com.