Glass guitar makes a noise in art event

"A Soaring Sound," the innovative glass slide guitar created by Susie Zeitner and Jayson Bowerman was one of the most interesting and talked-about pieces to grace the auction floor on Saturday night, selling to one lucky buyer for a high bid of $1,000.

"Jayson and I collaborated last year on a glass guitar that wasn't playable," said artist Zeitner. "It was really his inspiration to one-up it this year and make it function as a working musical instrument. So this time we needed to do the entire piece in glass, the neck included."

The lap guitar is a revelation in pale blue glass that begs to be touched and played. A red-tailed hawk, wings outstretched, is captured in a cloudless morning sky. The piece went through five separate firings at a high temperature of 1,550 degrees, for a total kiln time of over 70 hours.

"Jayson provided a template to cast the glass. It's eight layers of three-millimeter-thick sheet glass with powdered glass of different colors placed in each layer to create depth for the hawk impression," Zeitner explained. "In order to create the illusion of the sky I put in blue glass powder."

It's a process in the glass world called "painting with light," and involves building a layer of imagery through the glass so, when fired, altogether the entire image is rendered with saturation through the entire piece.

Bowerman remembers a strange phone call he got last year when working in the Breedlove R&D department.

"I took a call from Susie, and she said she'd made a glass guitar and wanted to put a neck and a bridge on it. That was pretty cool and so I had this old Breedlove neck and bridge and they brought it in and we were able to put strings on it. It had this insane resonance when you strummed it. That gave us the idea to build a functioning guitar this year.

"My wife, Jane, suggested the theme of the red-tailed hawk," he said.

One of the drawbacks and limitations of glass, according to Bowerman, is because it's a pyroclastic medium it is difficult to maintain the dimensional accuracy for the frets. He knew that would be solved by making it a slide guitar, played on your lap.

"Dan Zeitner did all the shaping and drilling. I installed the tuners and hand-carved the ebony bridge, and the Damascus steel saddles were contributed by Ponderosa Forge," said Bowerman. "They did a beautiful job. Last thing we added were the Lace Dobro sensor pickups that allow vibrations of the strings to be picked up by an amplifier. Plug in and it's ready to go."

Zeitner feels strongly about her sponsorship love for the Sisters Americana Project and has contributed many unique pieces over the years.

"I got a scholarship in high school to the Academy of Art in San Francisco, which totally changed my career direction," said Zeitner. "I want kids to have the opportunity to follow their creative dreams, and that's not always in an academic institution.

"Jayson and I are extremely proud of what we accomplished and I'm honored to collaborate with him. It's never been done before. The piece has gotten attention from the YouTube videos and in the media and glass worlds. It even caught the eyes of the guitar techs for musicians Ben Harper and Dave Matthews."

"I think the sound is both sweet and fat at the same time. This guitar is so distinct and unique and will be highly collectible in time," said Bowerman. "This won't be the last."

The red hawk slide guitar has been so well received that there's another in the works.

"We were inspired to do a whole series of them and have already started on a second glass guitar; this one will feature an Osprey," Zeitner said.

Bowerman intends to start his own business this summer making custom mandolins, tenor or lap steel guitars and is already taking orders. Visit his Web site at www.

bowermanguitars.com.