![]() ![]() The four-person crew makes 550 highly coveted floats each year. ![]() While waiting for the furnace to get hot each morning, he, his wife, Jennifer Nauck, and their two assistants fill in time gaps by making floats. Now in its eighth year, the Glass Float Project has worked its way into the daily flow of Mr. The scavenger hunt became a gateway to a different world. People come for the beaches and restaurants, but most never explore the deceptively wild and desolate natural areas. Block Island swells from under 1,000 year-round residents to roughly 20,000 visitors per day at the height of summer. The event began that June, gathering unanticipated momentum with locals and tourists. Horton handmade 150 glass floats at his studio in Wakefield, R.I. Horton, an avid beachcomber, loves mulling the history of these pieces. The floats inevitably detached and traveled across the sea, washing up in fated spots after unimaginable journeys. For roughly a century, foreign fishermen attached glass floats to their nets. He spent his childhood sailing the 12 miles from mainland Rhode Island to Block Island, a 7,000-acre dot in the Atlantic. ![]() Horton, a 46-year-old glass artist, started the Glass Float Project in 2012 as a whimsical scavenger hunt, just for fun. I’m absolutely amazed and humbled and proud but, like, what have I created? Am I a cult leader? I had no idea that this would turn into this.” Technically they’re floats, but sure, they’re orbs,” Mr. “I love the term ‘orbivore.’ They call them orbs. Hundreds of beautiful handblown glass fishing floats are scattered across the wilderness of Block Island each year, attracting an underground society of fanatics who will stop at nothing to find them. When the women discovered what she’d hidden, screams of glee pierced the air. Holmes lingered casually, adjusting her now empty backpack. A group of women approached, still reeling from getting lost at Rodman’s Hollow without cellphone signal. On another part of the island, Dawn Holmes walked back up a dirt path after completing her mission. Two hours of MacGyver-ing and one downpour later, success arrived, with the help of a spaghetti spoon taped to a branch. Hall, her mother, brother, aunt and cousin untied their shoes, using the laces to form a makeshift net in the hopes of picking up something just out of arm’s reach. In a forest here, Katie Hall and members of her extended family were dangling her mother’s bra into a hollowed-out tree trunk with the laser focus of open-heart surgeons. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |