I fell in love with glass as an art form in the 1970s. In the early 70s, I started creating glass art as a hobby, after meeting Onita Jones, a regionally acclaimed glass artist at a ceramics show in Anaheim, California. She invited me to her studio where I learned techniques developed by her and Kay Kinney, a California glass artist and crafter, author of Glass Craft.
From 1977 through 1981 I was a full-time artist and commercial glass arts and crafts entrepreneur. I not only created glass art, but I also developed a highly successful arts and crafts business around what I learned and created. Rather than rely solely on the sale of my art pieces, I decided to teach others how to create their own art. Instead of teaching each artist, I taught industry and scholastic art teachers and developed a distribution program for training materials and the products necessary to complete the courses, leaving retail product sales up to the teachers or the shops and schools where they taught.