What keeps glass artist Greg Lueck fascinated is the endless challenge of translating chemical formulas into living, colored light. Because color formulas tend to be closely guarded secrets in the glass-blowing world, he said, he has concocted many of his own. Shelves in Lueck’s office are lined with dozens of bottles, examples of his original attempts. From the same stew of ingredients, he said, he once produced 50 pounds of rich, royal red — and an equivalent 50 of simply awful orange. “You never stop learning and experimenting,” said Lueck, 66, the founder of Firehouse Glass, a busy glass-blowing studio, school and showroom in downtown Vancouver. “Color is all about light and how the light comes through.” Firehouse Glass will celebrate its 25th anniversary during the upcoming First Friday Art Walk with demonstrations by Lueck and other studio regulars (many of whom started out as Lueck’s students), followed by a month of Saturdays showcasing Lueck’s artworks.

Art galleries and studios have come and gone from downtown Vancouver for decades, but Firehouse Glass endured even the COVID-19 pandemic and came back stronger, manager Jessica Lueck said. Key to that is keeping the place busy with private lessons and classes of all sizes, as well as rentals to colleagues working on their own commercial or artistic projects, she said. “This is a public-access studio,” she said. “It’s home for the homeless, lonely glass artist — and there are a lot of them out there.” Firehouse Glass was buzzing with Luecks a few afternoons before Christmas. Greg’s daughter Jessica, 35, is manager and son Andrew, 39, is lead instructor. (Greg and Jessica also operate a consulting business, The Lueck Group, and Andrew is a home remodeler.) Andrew’s daughter, Izzabell, 18, is a gallery associate. Also on hand was Andrew’s son, 5-year-old Finnegan, who exuded physical energy but steered around anything fragile or hot.

:Greg Lueck said he became interested in making Berkemeyers — a historical style of wide-mouthed drinking goblet — after one caught his eye in an old Dutch painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo The central furnace at Firehouse reaches 2400 degrees Fahrenheit, Lueck said. Izzabell’s friend Lola Flannery, 18, took her first quick glass-blowing lesson from Andrew, in which she fashioned a Christmas ornament. Wielding a long blowpipe, she scooped a blob of molten glass from the big central furnace; rolled it into a smooth cylinder on a cooling table while adding granules of a color called “old gold”; blew air into the pipe, expanding the cylinder into a hollow globe; added one more molten glass dollop on top; and clipped it off to form the stem. Finally, the globe went into an annealing (cooling) furnace where it would come down gradually from 900 degrees to room temperature, Andrew said. “It’s harder than it seems, because you have to work pretty fast,” Flannery said. “It’s exciting in the moment.” Superstructure Family is how Firehouse Glass began in the 1990s after Greg Lueck’s wife, painter Rebecca Seymour, witnessed her husband’s fascination with a glass-blowing demonstration they happened to catch. She signed him up for a glass-blowing course at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland as a gift.

Greg Lueck said he became interested in making Berkemeyers — a historical style of wide-mouthed drinking goblet — after one caught his eye in an old Dutch painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo Glass blowing turned out to be the perfect pastime for Lueck, an engineer with an artistic side. Lueck and Seymour eventually purchased the historic 1906 Vancouver National Bank Building on the corner of Sixth and Main streets. They worked with designers and engineers to remodel and reinforce the place before filling it with the kilns, tools and technologies required by different types of glassblowers. Lueck said he wanted to bring a diverse community together in one place. Lueck’s son Andrew was a kid then, and recalls the fun of helping to tear out old walls and watch the assembly, in the catacombs below street level, of a welded superstructure to handle the immense weight of the furnace on the ground floor. Firehouse Glass opened its doors on the last night of 1999 with a New Year’s Eve party. Greg wore a tuxedo while firing up his first pieces, he said. Since then, the Luecks have had a front-row view of lower downtown’s changes. Where there used to be pawn shops and little foot traffic, Lueck said, there’s now a thriving entertainment scene and visitors from Portland. Even longtime Vancouver folks sometimes stop in, surprised, to ask how long Firehouse Glass has been there.

While it’s still hot, Firehouse Glass lead instructor Andrew Lueck clips off the stem of a glass globe Christmas ornament. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo The Luecks said they aren’t too nervous about glass breaking during the upcoming rebuild of Main Street, even though it’s due to begin next month right outside their door. Over 25 years, they’ve already withstood some quaking and shaking. Challenges and classics Cranking out similar glass pieces year after year can get repetitive, Greg Lueck said, so you’ve got to keep it fresh. He’s always on the lookout for interesting projects. In recent years, he’s been commissioned to create outdoor light fixtures for Portland businesses, and one intricate chandelier for a building in Vancouver. On a more intimate level, it’s not uncommon for him to get requests for urns or even to infuse human cremains into “cremation glass,” he said. A few years ago, Lueck was visiting New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art when a particular wide-mouthed, decorated glass goblet — what’s known as a Berkemeyer — caught his eye from within a centuries-old still-life painting by a Dutch master.

Colorful creations adorn the showroom at Firehouse Glass. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo Traditional Berkemeyers are green, but Lueck took about three minutes to create a violet one at Firehouse Glass. The final touch was adding dollops of molten glass to the outside, one by one, and stamping them with a mold that shaped them into finely textured bumps. “The raspberry stamp — that’s a classic,” Andrew said as he helped.