Brad Stearns took a long metal pole out of a furnace. At the end was a molten glob of red-hot glass.

Moving quickly, he paced across the room to a table with piles of different colored bits of glass.

Stearns rolled the blob across the chunks of glass, reheated it and rolled it out into a sphere and repeated.

After around 20 minutes, the amorphous slab of glass had been transformed into a blue-hued decorative pumpkin, complete with a twisted stem on top.

“Each piece that you make is individual,” he said. “You have to be excited about it to do this well.”

Stearns is the studio manager for Redmond School of Glass, which has been operating in the city for at least the last 15 years.

Current owners, Heather Mathieson and her husband, bought the studio four years ago.

Mathieson said they got interested in glass art when they lived in California.

After moving up to the Pacific Northwest, they took a class at the school, and when the previous owner decided to sell, they decided to buy.

“We saw the kind of impact it was having on the Eastside,” she said.

Since then, they have continued holding classes and bringing on instructors.

The school is one of the only glass studios on the Eastside, and Mathieson said it provides adults something to do.

“From our perspective, Redmond has done a very good job building out activities for kids,” she said, but not so much for adults. “… At the end of the day, we’re looking for those adults to come in.”

While the studio is occasionally open to kids, they focus on teaching and working with adults.

There is a beginners class and a more advanced six-week class for serious hobbyists.

Mathieson said their philosophy is to let the students do as much of the actual work as they can, giving them a sense of ownership over their creation.

With glass work, Mathieson said the mechanical fundamentals are important, but the art really comes alive when the person working it throws their own unique twist on it.

Stearns said that, even after nearly two decades of working with glass, he’s always trying to tweak his creations. He pointed to a row of glass pumpkins with varying curls on their stems as an example of subtle but important variations in the work.

But the studio and artists don’t just teach classes and make pumpkins, the walls of the studio are covered in large glass plates.

The lobby has various tables and shelves, all packed with multi-colored pieces of glasswork, ranging from plates and pumpkins to vases.

The artists are also allowed to use the studio to work on their own custom pieces for clients or to sell, a service that some there said was an uncommon practice.

Ultimately, Mathieson said they’re trying to make the craft accessible to the broader community.

“This is people’s chance to really try out being a glass artist,” she said.

For more information, visit RedmondSchoolOfGlass.com.

Brad Stearns works glass on the end of a pole into a ball to be shaped into a pumpkin. Aaron Kunkler/Redmond Reporter