The heat of the summer was rivaled only by the 2,100-degree furnace on July 8, as the Waseca County Fair welcomed a mesmerizing new attraction. For the first time in the fair’s history, Dallas, Texas-based mobile glassblowing studio So Hot Glass set up shop, drawing amazed crowds with live, high-heat demonstrations.
Run by artists Max Frayman and Kayla Socha, the duo brought 16 years of expertise to Waseca. Their shared passion for the ancient craft was ignited years ago during a glassblowing class at Jacksonville University—a single spark that transformed into a lifelong, full-time career.
During their live shows, the pair operates with highly synchronized teamwork. Kayla works directly with the liquid hot glass, maneuvering the glowing medium with practiced precision, while Max acts as the narrator, translating the complex, fast-paced steps of the process for the captivated audience.
Watching glassblowing is a lesson in both physics and extreme patience. The demonstration began with 40 pounds of soft glass cooking inside a furnace at a blistering 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.
To add vibrant patterns and color to their creations, the artists rolled the molten gather over crushed shards of colored glass. From there, a series of precise rolls on a flat marble stone slab—known as a marver—helped flatten and prep the glass into its initial working shape.
Using a blowpipe like a giant straw, they introduced air into the glass to create a starter bubble, cooling it slightly in the air. To shape specific spots of the expanding bubble without collapsing the rest of the piece, they used simple wet newspaper—don’t worry, not the Journal—which shield’s the artist’s hands while cooling targeted areas of the glass.
For the main demonstration, the starter shape—which initially resembled a lightbulb—was gently squeezed into a metal mold to create a classic ribbed pumpkin design. One of the most critical phases of the process was creating the “jack line.” Using a tool lubricated with beeswax, the duo created a thin neck in the glass, allowing them to cleanly crimp and break the finished piece off the blowpipe when ready.
With glowing, honey-like glass moving through the air, Frayman acknowledged a universal human instinct. “Everyone gets those intrusive thoughts to want to touch it,” he joked. But as the artists can attest, doing so is a major hazard. Both revealed their own collection of burn scars from singed knees and thighs to scorched tips of fingers and wrists as a physical reminder of the high stakes involved in working with liquid glass.
Even after the physical shaping is complete, the danger of ruining the piece isn’t over. Glass cannot cool down at room temperature, or the thermal shock will cause it to violently shatter. To finish the pumpkin, it was placed into an annealing oven—a specialized kiln that holds the glass at 963 degrees Fahrenheit before slowly and safely lowering the temperature over a 12-hour cycle.
While So Hot Glass specializes in complex custom sculptures, their fair inventory features popular, smaller hand-held designs. Visitors had the chance to purchase glass pumpkins, delicate horse figurines, aquatic creatures like swans and fish, glass olives, and even a few glass revolvers.
Best of all, the artists made sure to give back to the community that welcomed them. Alongside their retail sales, Frayman and Socha donated several of their hand-blown pieces back to the Waseca County Fair, where they were auctioned off to support future fair programming.
