1st Video Outline

Below is my first rendition of a plan for my video project. Upon meeting with Aimee in conferences, the direction of the video has changed to encompass more of my own personal path through glass, as well as my process with a hope that I can create parallels to my own life outside of glassmaking. 


Nolan Callahan
Video Project Proposal
Aimee Labrie

Video Title: “Headies”, “Heady”
Theme/ Concept: The Art and Culture of Glass Pipes
Genre: Nonfiction Documentary
Synopsis: This film is a tribute to the documentary film “Degenerate Art” that was made by Marble Slinger. Slinger is a veteran glass pipe maker who has been one of the most public voices of the movement being involved in the borosilicate glass scene around its beginnings in the late 90’s in the parking lots of Phish shows. With his work both making glass, and making “Degenerate Art” Slinger and many of his close friends and fellow glassblowers featured in the film have paved the way for the next generation of glass pipemakers. They also helped to create an enormous community that is immersed in their artwork bringing a newfound level of acceptance of the formerly illicit activity of making glass pipes. As universal opinions on cannabis have evolved as more and more states have begun to vote in new laws, these glass artists have begun to reach a new level of cultural significance. The pipes in this film were what originally inspired me to want tot blow glass for the first time. Discovering glass opened me up to endless creative expression, and allowed me to truly find myself. This video would be of the process of creating collaborative glass pipe between myself, my close friend Dimitrious Patakos, and my close friend Jacob Moskowitz. Immediately upon meeting Jake we struck up a serious friendship around our love of glass. Jake opened up his shop to me and allowed me to freely explore the medium that had captured my imagination for years ever since first seeing Degenerate Art. His depth of knowledge in glass having completed his BFA in glass at Cleveland Institute of Art and also serving as the head scientific glassblower for Rutgers University allowed me to be exposed to every corner of the glass universe. Through the time we have known each other, we have rarely worked together in an intensely organized process like what this project would require. We have developed multiple business more recently, and those have captured much of Jake’s time and attention along with school taking up much of mine. We both bonded over our love of glass pipes, and this creation will be an ode to our friendship as well as a toast to our newest ventures together as the shop makes its way to becoming the public access teaching facility we have been working everyday to create. We will soon be able to teach even more people about our love of glass. Dimitri is one of the strongest people I know. He has come through incredible hardship to reach where he is today. He recently opened up his own glass gallery in downtown New Brunswick that features much of his own work, but also some of my own. At only 22, Dimitri is an incredible artist that makes intricate designs and incredible sculptures seemingly just fall out of his hands. All of our styles and abilities will be able to feed off of one another as we assemble our vision. One of the most iconic scenes of Degenerate Art takes place at the mountain studio of Matthew Stroven, known popularly by his pseudonym Banjo. Banjo, along with a number of other artists assemble an incredible piece that required insane technical ability. A glassblowing legend, Robert Mickelsen, who at the time of the filming specialized in goblets and fine art, visited the mountain studio to witness the piece being made, and heralded the ability of the young artists but in the same questioned the point of having to make it into a pipe. Currently, Robert Mickelsen almost exclusively makes pipes, and his own transition from staunchly anti-pipe to pipe maker is really the whole representation of cannabis’s ability to permeate American consciousness since around 2011. Things have moved extremely quickly around normalization and cannabis culture has been pulled in every which often for financial gain. It is important to highlight a craft movement that features some of the original cannabis activists and entrepreneurs. The glass pipe movement is here to stay, and this video will be both a the documentation of the creation of a glass pipe as well as accompanying interviews with the artists creating it to serve as narration and cut scenes in a very similar style to Degenerate Art. I am even debating filming this on a lower quality camera like a JVC to capture a bit more underground feel as the East Coast is the final frontier for cannabis legalization and normalization. It still isn’t fully accepted here, but the scene is full of enthusiastic, driven artists that are chomping at the bit to make their next heady. This video is a short glimpse into the life of 3 of said artists.