Local artist preserves spirit of loved ones

(above) Boutte spins on colored glass, the basis of a Spirit weight pattern. PHOTOS BY JEREMIAH O In a home-studio on Camano Island, glass artist Marc Boutte quietly crafts tributes to lives and loves who have passed from this world. Each Spirit Weight is a hand-blown paperweight containing the ashes of a loved one in its hollow center.

Boutte’s idea formed in the late ‘90s, when a client asked him to role the ashes of her father into a glass weight. Boutte suggested preserving the ashes in a hollow instead. He refined the concept in 2001 when his Malamute, Spirit, passed on and Boutte named the project in his honor.

Today, Boutte blows memorials to humans and animals alike.

“Glass is a fitting medium to use,” Boutte says. “It’s a liquid at any temperature. It has no crystalline structure.”

In this sense, it is very much alive, and “light reacts with glass in incredible ways.”

Boutte gathers clear glass in the process of crafting a Spirit weight. Glass is also resilient.

“It will be around forever, as a person’s memory can be around forever and passed from generation to generation,” Boutte added.

Multiple Spirit Weights may be made, allowing each family member a tangible remembrance, but each will be unique, just as each person and each memory is unique.

The first Spirit Weights were clear unadorned glass, but have become more intricate over the years. Clients choose a clear or cobalt center. Boutte incorporates silver accents, and can also work a twist or heart-shaped pattern into glass. Names and dates are etched in the bottom of each weight.

Boutte’s Spirit Weights are the culmination of 23 year spent working glass and a lifetime spent working with his hands. Since building his own electric guitar at age 12, he’s gathered experiences in steel fabrication, welding, carpentry and pottery. These skills all came into play when Boutte moved from clay to glass in 1986, because “it’s more of a challenge.”

In 1987, Boutte was studying at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina when one of the furnaces

broke.

“I wanted to blow glass,” Boutte recalls.

So he fixed it, drawing on his background in the trades. Two visiting faculty were so impressed with Boutte that in 1988 they invited him to their home country of Denmark to build a shop at the International Glass Museum. Boutte finished the shop and stayed to blow glass for the Museum’s 1989 season. The pieces were put up for sale and Boutte received 50 percent commission.

After returning to the

states, Boutte worked locally at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood for several years. He worked in the cold shop where, among other things, glass is etched and blasted after cooling. After three years Boutte moved on, and by 1996 he had set up his own glass studio on Camano Island, where he continues to work each day.

“This is basically a dance,” Boutte says of working with his molten medium.

The intrigue is in “the steps and timing.” Boutte’s dance blends passion and purpose. It is his way of using glass, which has brought him personal fulfillment, to give back to a community.

At this point Boutte says, “It becomes a circle.”

Staff Reporter Jeremiah O’Hagan: 629-8066 ext. 125 or ohagan@scnews.com.