Tyler Massoth aka Moose.
Lampworker specializing in "Fume" Born in 1993, in a small town in Southwest Michigan.
"Fume" is a term used to describe evaporating precious metals into Fumes, capturing those fumes, and manipulating them to yield visable colors that tend to be pretty unique to the method.
I started lampworking on my fathers lap in 1999 when i was 6 years old. We woud make christmas ornaments, travel to various events and festivals around our area making and selling our art on site. It was one of my first core memories I had from this industry. And it stuck with me indefinitely, helping shape my art career from a young age. My father's support and guidance very much helped get me in the right direction to where I am now.
In 2008 I upgraded the setup I had to be able to start making some functional work. By 2010, that was all I was doing for work. During this time, I was still under 18, the local headshops wouldn't let me in the door, so my father used to have to walk me into the shops, just so i could sell my pipes. When I would go to sell my pieces at these shops it was an awesome oppurtinity to check out other peoples glass work and seek some inspiration. In hindsite, most of what I was seeing was import glass, but I always loved the concept of a color changing pipe. I couldnt afford pure silver or gold at the time ( the two materials essential to fuming ), but knew I really wanted to make some color changing pipes. So for a few months time, I used to boil scrap glass rods I had laying around and catch the fumes that would boil off in order to make a color changing pipe. Quite the time.
Currently, I work from a home studio in the Southern Michigan countryside, where my wife Jess and I grow, raise, and forage the majority of our food, keeping it as natural as possible. When we cook using the food we produce; we aim to produce an intricate, elevated end product from basic ingredients. We do this best by relying on attention to detail and allowing the basic ingredients to shine through in a fudamental form. I do my best to express the same mentality in my art work. I use the most basic ingredients I can find: pure silver, pure gold, and rely on attention to detail to create an elevated end product.