The latest in Ottawa's long history of producing quality glass products — items from car windows to marbles — are the unique and original art glass creations anyone can learn to make at Starved Rock Hot Glass.

The distinctive shop — a remodeled gas station at 700 W. Main St. — was opened in June by Ottawa resident Laura Johnson just after her graduation from the University of Illinois.

Glassblowing is one of earliest forms of art, dating to about 1500 B.C. Johnson, a 2005 graduate of Ottawa Township High School, was introduced to it when her high school senior art class took a field trip to the annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair in Chicago.

Completely smitten by the craft, she planned to pursue it at the U of I.

"That's what I had my heart set on."

Once there, however, she found the course was no longer offered.

"it was definitely a step back. I debated on whether I wanted to drop out of college or not. I ended up staying just to get a degree to fall back on."

Luckily, she found an accomplished glass blower in nearby Farmer City who offered to instruct her.

After her first year of training, when her father, Jeff Johnson, owner of the Flex Gym Fitness Center in Ottawa, was confident she was serious about continuing with glass art, he purchased the old gas station building and the two of them began remodeling it.

"After it was a Mobil gas station it was an insurance office and later a site for Christmas tree sales. It was just being used for storage when my dad bought it."

After three years of father and daughter working together on weekends, the building was transformed into a modern studio and workshop remodeled with an industrial look.

Johnson is proud of her father's skill.

"He definitely is handy. He used to be a welder and worked for ComEd as a pipefitter. He made all my equipment — everything."

The display studio is in the old office and the garage area converted into a workshop filled with the latest equipment for practicing the ancient art form.

"It definitely turned out better than I could have expected. It's the perfect size for me for what I'm doing here."

When Johnson opened for business, the building itself drew many curious lookers.

"People had been driving by here while the remodeling went on wanting to see what the inside looked like. They say they love what we've done with the place because it was kind of dumpy before. Now everybody who comes in says it's just beautiful."

Beautiful also would be the word for Johnson's original handblown art glass and jewelry.

Besides her own work, Johnson provides glassblowing demonstrations as well as instruction for $50 an hour.

She will work with any student.

"The other day I gave a class to a fourth-grader. She was just a really little girl and I had to help her a lot."

Beginner classes teach how to make glass paperweights or necklace pendants. For more advanced students there is traditional glassblowing and lampworking.

Johnson sees her shop as something more than her own business. It could, she thinks, inspire other artists to set up shop nearby.

She says she has talked with Mayor Robert Eschbach and other city officials and says they share her feeling the neighborhood could support other artisans.

"This area could become an artist's community."

For additional information about Starved Rock Hot Glass call the shop at 815-313-5445 or visit its Web site at www.starvedrockhotglass.com. Been There, Done That A work of art in 25 minutes If you are a hot glass art novice, as I was, there is common sense in your first project being a paperweight.

"My first paperweight was all misshapen, but it still worked as a paperweight. So it's a good place to start," explained Laura Johnson, artist and proprietor of Starved Rock Hot Glass in Ottawa.

Actually, the idea of dealing with a gob of liquid glass seemed a little dangerous to me. But Johnson is there to work with her students step-by-step.

She began by explaining all the equipment in her workshop, from ovens to the simple metal and wood tools used to shape the glass.

She started out by creating a paperweight herself, briskly but carefully explaining each step and technique during a five-minute orientation.

Then it was my turn. She handed me the long metal punty rod with a wobbling mass of glass at the end she had collected from an electric furnace where the substance is kept in a molten state around the clock.

Then she had me place it into the "glory hole" — a sort of furnace that fires at 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit — to make it even more malleable.

The main trick — or skill — is to keep rotating the rod so the glass does not fall off.

"That's the most important thing," she said. "You have to keep spinning it the whole time."

The next step was to roll the glass for a bit on a flat marbury table and then dip it into a dish of preselected small colored chunks of glass. Then it was back in the glory hole so the glass chunks could melt into the glass.

The next steps were to twist the hot glass with a large pair of tweezers to swirl the melted color chunks, heat it again, form it with a wood "block" and finally use a pair of jacks — another tweezer-like implement — to separate the actual paperweight section from a narrow stem.

Johnson applied the finishing touches. She tapped the punty rod, setting up a vibration to allow the paperweight to crack off the stem, then flattened the bottom of the paperweight before placing it into an annealing over that would cool the paperweight at the proper rate to prevent it from cracking.

Time elapsed: 25 minutes. Not bad for a rookie, Johnson told me.