Unlike many artists, Roger Moore has taken studio safety very seriously from the beginning of his career. He became a warm glass artist just a few years ago, after having “varying degrees of success” as a graphic designer, publisher, gourmet food purveyor and stockbroker. To get his new career off on the right foot, he built himself a brand new studio — a studio that, while aesthetically-pleasing and highly functional, is just about as safe as it could be.
“Anticipating safety issues is far better than reacting to them.” says Moore. “When I built my studio, I took the lead in designing a safe place to do my art.”
Choosing to Become an Artist
The exterior of Roger Moore's studio was designed to be aesthetically-pleasing, but the inside has safety as a top priority.
In 2004, while Moore and his wife Karen were visiting the Northwest, a developer friend took them to see a house he was finishing. Looking over the house and land, the Moore’s leapt into action and within a few days decided to leave California and head north.
Around this time, the couple took a trip to Portland, Oregon, where they visited Bullseye Glass Company. After seeing the showroom and factory, Moore was taken with the medium, and envisioned a new future for himself as a glass artist. He signed up as a student there and took classes and workshops to learn glass techniques. Once he finished classes in slump and torch work, and other methods, he went home fired up to build a studio of his own.
Safety Plans for the Studio
The Moore home sits on a four-acre, largely-forested property near Tacoma, Washington. In 2007, Moore began to build a studio on a cleared area of the property. Taking paper and pen in hand, he sketched out a studio space.
“One of the things that impressed me about Bullseye was that they taught safety first,” he remembers. “I took classes with Ted Sawyer, and he made it clear that glass could be dangerous. So I incorporated safety concerns in my designs.”
Moore keeps his studio clean and organized, and was sure to include many features that keep the space especially safe.
After sketching out his initial design Moore found an architect and contractors to work with. He took the lead in safety issues and often challenged the builders to make things his way.
“Safety concerns led the design process, and I often got blank stares when I insisted on certain things,” he explains. “Like the super-powerful venting fan I installed in the silk screening room, or the drain in floor of the cold working room. When I wanted the studio floor to be a single poured concrete slab and I wanted it black. Everyone shook their heads, but they did it. But it meant the there were no crevices for glass to fall into, and it was easier to see bits of glass against the black.”
With safety in mind, Moore’s three large kilns are all raised off the floor on custom-made, welded steel stands. These are placed away from the walls so that air can circulate around and above and below the kilns.
“I also designed the stands so the small front loading kilns opened at my arm level. I don’t have to bend over or stretch to get things out of them or see into them," Moore says as he walks through the studio. “And I never have any wood anywhere near them.”
Safety Rules Beyond the Walls
Moore’s concerns for safety go far beyond just the construction of his studio. He keeps a respirator nearby in a cabinet, and smoke-tests it regularly to make sure it is working.
His safety concerns even involve his choice of clothing: “I don’t wear jewelry, a watch or long sleeve shirts. But I do wear closed toe Crocs, wraparound safety glasses and long cuff-less pants. It’s too easy for bits of glass to fall into cuffs. “… Safety becomes a habit. When Karen or I come into the studio, we automatically put on our safety glasses. We never open a kiln or work in the cold working room without them. The kiln furniture is coated ceramic material that keeps dust down. And I have a large exhaustless Hepa vacuum that I use it to clean out the kilns. I even built a special vacuum with a hose rack that helps prevent ceramic material from building up in the hose.”
His safety rules also extend to clean-up and having visitors.
“I put away all the glass at the end of the day, and I hose down the cold working room regularly. I don’t allow animals in the studio, which drives some artists crazy. They’ll want to visit the studio and bring along their dog, and I tell them they can’t. I try to explain that despite keeping the studio as clean as I can, it’s too easy for an animal to pick up a piece of glass on a paw and then lick the paw, and ingest the glass.”
Moore also discourages visits by children for similar reasons.
“It’s the hardest thing to teach people safety,” he says, shaking his head. “Unless they’ve had an experience, people just think you're being obsessive but these are real concerns. (I have a friend who is) an artist who work also works in warm glass, and she was having trouble with her vision. She went to the doctor, who looked at her eye and discovered a tiny piece of glass in her eye lid that was scratching her cornea. It probably flew off of something and stuck to her eyebrow, and she didn’t feel it. Then sometime later it probably migrated to her eye when she wiped her face. That’s the kind of thing I want to prevent happening to me.”
About Roger Moore’s Glass ArtMoore uses his studio as a test lab for bringing his ideas to life. Based on his long interest in Japanese art, Moore experimented in his silk screen room and developed a technique for creating “gyotaku” glass art. The process evolved out of the practice of Japanese fishermen who would wipe ink on their catch and drop the fish on a piece of rice paper to create an image record of each fish. Moore wanted to find a way to fix these images in glass. Experimenting in his silk screen room, he developed a technique for creating “gyotaku” glass art, which he sees as his “fine art.” In addition, Moore creates glass pieces appropriate for architectural installations, as well as functional pieces, including a line of various glass and metal tables, and wood and metal tables.