🤩I’m excited to share these photos that a really kind patron sent me of the @edieparkerflower display of my pieces, and other’s in their collection, being showcased at the Barney’s New York “The High End” section of the legendary department store at Beverly Hills. Pretty swanky! . One of the things that makes me so excited to see this (aside from the joy that working with the great people at Edie Parker has been) is how this view contrasts with and reminds me of the day, about 17 years ago, that Fedex brought me back a box of bubblers that represented a month’s work that was rejected for delivery by The Crush (my distributor at the time) because of the W Bush administration’s ‘Pipe Dream’ scourge that was putting pipe blowers and sellers in jail, taking their homes and savings, for the sin of making functional glass art. And I didn’t have the $99 dollars needed to retrieve the box from Fedex, because all of my money was in that box. And suddenly no one was buying glass pipes, work shops closed down left and right. At the time of ‘Pipe Dreams’ it was said that greater than 1% of Eugene was glass blowers- you couldn’t throw a stone in Eugene without hitting one. And now, they are so few. It was a tough, scary time. But now, here we are- accepted in a department store right by the shoe display. We’ve come a long way, and there is still a long way to go in the greater industry to achieve true social justice for all, but I’m proud to be part of making pipes that tell this story and brings our art to its rightful places and out of the shadows. #glasspipes #sweetdream #edieparkerflower #fruitpipes #highlife #functionalglass (at Beverly Hills, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2zu61jnLKn/?igshid=1c0q4vlgiy8o4
