Our Story
Explore Licking County takes great pride in collaborating with community partners in creating experiences that are second to none and specific to our Land of Legend. The Find the Glass project is a perfect example of this collaborative community spirit. It started simply enough; an email with a thought. That idea grabbed the imagination of the Explore Licking County team and the powerhouse team from Newark-based The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology. The Works would lend their glass artist and studio curator, Larry Tuber, to the project to craft the glass that would live around the replicated Hopewell era flint point. Explore Licking County would take the lead in promotion, creative capital, and storytelling. The lingering question. How do you create something never done before when pouring hot glass around and over a knapped piece of flint? The obvious answer. You reach out to your partners at one of the nation’s leaders in industrial lighting to have a custom mold built. Holophane has been a Newark manufacturing staple since 1900 and welcomed the Find the Glass project with open arms, agreeing to cast a mold for Larry to use. The final piece of the collaboration puzzle would be YOU, the person looking for one of the most epic, family-friendly summer adventures to come down the line in a long time. It’s all up to you now. Get out there and uncover your own one-of-a-kind art piece that blends the best of Licking County’s history, creativity, and ingenuity.
About the Artist
Larry Tuber claims that the sound of breaking glass and fire is what pulled him into the art form. He loves both the sound and heat as much as he loves the act of creation itself. As a photography major at Kent State University, Larry began photographing other glass artists’ work for portfolio projects. He quickly realized what was happening on the other end of his camera lens was more fascinating to him. He traded photography for glassblowing lessons, and by 1989, he had opened his own studio in Columbus’s Arena District. Fast forward to 2010 when Larry accepted the position as the Glass Studio Director at The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology. The position has allowed Larry to share his love of glass blowing with thousands of visitors annually. It also affords him time to continue creating his own one-of-a-kind pieces. Many of which are large-scale glass installations that can be seen at local universities and galleries. Always up for a challenge, Larry jumped at the chance to bring the Find the Glass project to life with his usual sense of creativity and artful intent.
