{"id":662,"date":"2015-04-01T18:09:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T18:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=662"},"modified":"2018-02-08T13:35:22","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:35:22","slug":"drinking-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/drinking-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Drinking Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Visions-website-PBGC\"<\/a>
\nTHE BUSINESS OF CRAFT BEER, CRAFT GLASSES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Through a narrow door downtown, three focused young men race around a work zone labeling, taping and packing orders into shipping boxes. All business, they have no time to talk.<\/p>\n

After the mailman has come and gone, the beer starts to flow, the pool balls fly and the jokes get progressively worse. It\u2019s the other side of the Pretentious Beer Glass Company.<\/p>\n

The company is the brainchild of Matthew Cummings, \u201907 fine arts, who spent most of the fall moving from Louisville, Kentucky, to Knoxville.<\/p>\n

The move has not been as simple as packing a U-Haul.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Matthew-Cummings\"<\/a>
Matthew Cummings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Cummings and his team of Appalachian Center for Craft alumni have dealt with commercial leases, business plans, plumbing and electrical problems, and city inspections. They are building their equipment by hand, welding furnace frames and designing spaces without cost-prohibitive computer-aided design renderings.<\/p>\n

All of it has been a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m dealing with how hard it is because I\u2019m not doing it for myself. I\u2019m doing it to build a community. From 9 to 5, we bust out making beer glasses and then 5 comes along and we clock out and make art,\u201d Cummings said. \u201cThis is my retirement plan. Artists don\u2019t get 401(k)s. I\u2019m doing this for the kids I\u2019m going to hopefully have. I\u2019m doing it for my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Knoxville space is designed for more than making glasses. There is gallery space, a hot and cold shop to blow and manipulate glass, and bar seating for guests to drink and watch it all happen. Next door is a bar and brewery (the Pretentious Beer Glass Company has its own microbrewery and original recipes), a shop and beer garden.<\/p>\n

When Cummings opened the Pretentious Beer Glass Company on the online retailer Etsy in 2012, the store sold about 30 glasses a month; enough to help even out an artist\u2019s income. The pace has sped up; in one day, two people make between 55 and 75 glasses. Even at that pace, merchandise is often on back order.<\/p>\n

But the artists say the effort is worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best thing about working here is the people. I\u2019m surrounded by two guys who are super smart, they have an eye for detail, they\u2019re super creative but at the end of the day, they\u2019re still fun to have a beer with,\u201d said Thoryn Ziemba, \u201910 fine arts. \u201cThe worst part is being so invested in this. I care so much that I can get a little hung up on a detail that doesn\u2019t matter as much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The details are what make Pretentious Beer Glass special; Cummings, Ziemba and Sam Meketon, \u201914 fine arts, are not making glasses in shapes solely based on other designs. Cummings did his own research and testing to learn more about how shapes enhance the taste.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more research I did, I felt like the beer glass was a problem that was hiding in plain sight,\u201d Cummings said. \u201cI poured different beers in the right glasses and then poured them into the wrong ones. Then I made the best guess I could about what made the glass function really well and what I could play with in the design.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of about 30 prototypes, the final glasses feature mustaches, pumpkin-shaped bottoms and multiple waists. All are designed to highlight different beers, to fit comfortably in a hand and be fun.<\/p>\n

One glass is patented; all are copyrighted. If Cummings has a favorite glass, he won\u2019t tell. He says they are his \u201cbabies.\u201d All but one of the eight glasses must be made by hand.<\/p>\n

The babies, and the business, are increasingly popular. The business has been featured in food and craft beer blogs, on websites like the Huffington Post and Food Beast, and in magazines including \u201cWired,\u201d \u201cMen\u2019s Lifestyle,\u201d \u201cPaste Magazine,\u201d and \u201cSouthern Living.\u201d Cummings has a waiting list of 60 wholesalers eager to carry the glasses, mostly craft beer stores and a few restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think his business plan is amazingly ambitious and clever,\u201d said Curtiss Brock, professor and head of the glass department at the Center for Craft. \u201cI\u2019m 70 percent pumped up and ready to support them, 30 percent concerned. But like any parent, you have to back off. These guys aren\u2019t messing around anymore; they are betting their livelihoods on this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these three guys can\u2019t pull off something, I don\u2019t know who can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though all but Meketon have been away from the Center for Craft for years, each of the three credits Brock\u2019s teaching for their successes so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy best memory of the Craft Center was probably early mornings Tuesday and Thursday going to work for Curt,\u201d Meketon said. \u201cYou knew you were going to get yelled at, you knew you were going to learn something and it\u2019s probably the thing that best prepared me for what I\u2019m doing now.\u201d<\/p>\n

While at TTU, Meketon won a student NICHE Award, one of North America\u2019s top fine craft competitions, and was nominated twice more. Ziemba won a Windgate Fellowship, one of the country\u2019s most prestigious and competitive awards for emerging artists. Cummings earned a master\u2019s in fine art from Illinois State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with Craft Center people is a testament to the caliber of people Curt puts out,\u201d Cummings said. \u201cI have my dream team. I didn\u2019t choose them because they\u2019re TTU. I chose them because they are super, super talented. I chose the two people I wanted to work with and they just happened to be Craft Center.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE BUSINESS OF CRAFT BEER, CRAFT GLASSES Through a narrow door downtown, three focused young men race around a work zone labeling, taping and packing orders into shipping boxes. All business, they have no time to talk. After the mailman has come and gone, the beer starts to flow, the pool balls fly and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spring15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1182,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/1182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}