Glass & graffiti: From students of the streets to students of the arts

In the far end of this downtown glass-blowing studio, a teenager with a black Sharpie slowly traces the jagged lettering that spells out his tag name.

A rap song by Hustler in his earphones drowns the sounds around him -- the conversation between some friends who got busted over the weekend for spraying a nearby building, an instructor's reprimands when the F-bomb is dropped, and the low hum of 3,000-degree propane-fueled burners.

For a moment, Stefán Benson does not look distracted. He's focused, if a little puzzled, on how to transform this plain sheet of glass into a vivid, graffiti-like mural.

"It's like learning to tag again," says the 17-year-old from Yakima, without looking up. "This is different, and something new always gets you excited."

There is a double challenge on weekday mornings here at The Glass Kaleidoscope. Instructors not only teach two classes of alternative high school students how to blow glass; they also have to find ways to engage those with more unconventional artistic backgrounds.

They are students of the streets. Some are young men in gang colors and tattoos. Some come from broken homes. Some are "discipline problems" who left the regular school system.

And some, like Benson, use spray cans to leave a mark on their city -- a city that wants them to stop.

"They have this creative urge and sometimes a very creative talent, but they don't always know how to handle it properly," says Jan Case, assistant principal at the Yakima School of the Arts, which has partnered with local glassblowing studios since becoming part of the Yakima School District two years ago. "All young people want to make their mark in the world, whether it's through this artistic means or some other means."

Mutual respect is the ground rule at the studio, says owner and instructor Sandi Drury. That means the few dozen students -- the same ones who in another class might blow off assignments or talk back to instructors -- who choose to take the class follow the rules and even arrive early sometimes.

It also means that instructors acknowledge as "art" what some are capable of producing outside the classroom -- graffiti, that is, often sprayed illegally on walls across the city -- even when others are quick to label it gang tagging.

"Anybody will go to any extreme to express themselves, and some of them don't have access to 'the arts,'" explains Frankie Santana, a resident artist and instructor's aide at the studio. "They don't have the canvases or easels or oils or acrylics or those socially accepted things."

Santana, 28, was a graffiti artist in his teenage years. Writing on walls and train cars with cheap spray cans gave him a sense of identity while growing up in a poor, single-parent home in Grandview and living on his own by age 15.

"It wasn't just the adrenaline rush," says Santana, stressing that he never joined a gang. What attracted him to graffiti was the colorful, cartoonish, intricate and three-dimensional aspect. It was graffiti's roots in New York City as an outlet for poor youths of color who lacked spaces to express themselves. And its very public nature -- street artists have an automatic audience.

He hasn't picked up a spray can in nearly a decade because of its stigma as a "gang activity." But without quite meaning to, Santana began incorporating the elements he loved so much about graffiti -- the bright colors and depth -- into his new, more "socially accepted" craft: glassblowing.

The combination of Santana's graffiti influence and the instructors' desire to truly engage some of their more talented but hard-to-reach students has resulted in very creative experimenting.

Benson's fused glass graffiti project is one example.

"It's a whole new field," admits Drury, the studio owner, standing over the partially finished piece she asked him to create one recent morning.

He first uses a Sharpie over glass to write his tag name, which he took up in fifth grade to keep alive the name and memory of a dead older brother. Then, Benson began filling in the letters with ground bits of orange and yellow glass, all the while expressing doubt that it would really turn out.

Once that tedious process is over, the piece will go into the studio's kiln so the colored bits melt, or fuse, over the glass and, it is hoped, come out as fused glass graffiti.

"You've gotta go over this 20,000 times, but it's worth it," Benson says, his fingers tipped in glue and orange glass bits.

In his head he already has a place for the finished piece: in the family room of the house he lives in with two older brothers and sisters "so everyone can see."

But someday, he says, he'd like the chance to create art for a wider audience.

"I want to paint murals, like they have in Toppenish," Benson said. "Something that will stay there forever, that even old people will like."

* Melissa Sánchez can be reached at 577-7675 or msanchez@yakimaherald.com.

* Interested in learning more about glassblowing?

The Glass Kaleidoscope, which opened about two months ago, offers private lessons to residents as well as its daily classes to alternative high school students. The downtown studio, store and café is at 106 S. Third Street in Yakima. Call 453-8648 for more information.