Beautiful Camano, nestled among the islands in Puget Sound, is an island of artists. Its rich history of art, legendary artists, and natural beauty makes it Washington’s premier destination for art lovers and collectors. Camano is home to family of artists since 1946; I’m honored to share some of the artists on “my island.” Let’s visit the studio of Lee Beitz, who learned to create beautiful and functional glass hands on.
Meet Lee Beitz
Lee Beitz lives on the south end of Camano. He has been a glass artist since 1989. “To long to count the years right now,” he says. Lee doesn’t only work with glass. “I work with wood and ceramics. I’ve even been playing with stone carving,” He shares. Lee feels fortunate to have a job doing what he loves. He has participated in over twenty studio tours!
The first floor of Lee’s studio is where he creates his art. The second floor is his store, filled with beautiful glass. Lee’s art is one hundred percent functional. The plates can be used as serving platters. You can wash them in the dishwasher, but most people think it’s too pretty to put food on. There’s yard art too. Lee says, “It’s pretty durable stuff. The key thing with glass is as long as you anneal it.”
“Thanks to the Studio Tour I really can’t stop creating,” Lee says. Lee learned art hands on. “If I want to learn something, I just start doing it,” he says. “For example, Karla Matzke has a stone carving class every year. I took that a couple of years. They give you a chisel and some stones and say, ‘have at it.’ You just do it. You’ll learn pretty quick if you have the knack or not. I’ll say that stone carving is pretty hard.”
Artistic Roots
Lee’s mother was something of an artist herself. He remembers how she would take wine, beer and whiskey bottles that Lee’s dad dumpster dived for. She cleaned them in the sink to remove labels, then sanded and primed them. She would dip popsicle sticks into paint and put lines on them. “She made thousands of these things, maybe tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand or more,” Lee recalls. “She had two storage units full, stacked to the ceiling. But they never sold.” Lee reflects, “It’s weird that my mom did that with glass bottles, and here I’m a glass artist.
Lee took three years of pottery before he even touched a glass. His pottery teacher told him that he should go to the glass lab, “you’ll love glass,” he had said. Lee did! In one month, Lee says, “I was hooked.” Summer came and Lee begged the glass teacher to let him take equipment home to work during the summer. Thankfully the teacher did, and Lee started cutting glass and playing with it on his own. “I knew that was my calling right then,” Lee says. That was the summer of 1988.
In 1989, his glass teacher mentioned him as a promising student to 1988 to a glass artist in the Mukilteo area, near where Lee lived in Everett. The artist hired Lee. Lee worked under him as an apprentice for sixteen years. First out of his basement; then a rented industrial building off Mukilteo Speedway; then a farm with a barn, where Lee fused glass for thirteen years. “That really sucked,” Lee remembers. During the winter, it was colder inside than outside, and in the summer, it was hotter inside than outside.
Though Lee’s roots include family genes and an artistic apprenticeship, at the end of the day, he is made to do art: “I think I’m born with creativity.”
Camano, a Family of Artists
For sixteen years Lee cut glass, did some designing, and learned the trade. But he didn’t get any recognition for his work. “That drove me to realize that I needed to go out on my own,” he says.” After saving enough money, he was finally able to buy a house. Lee moved to Camano Island in 2002.
What drew Lee to Camano was actually a founder of the studio tour. She stumbled upon him selling wood products in his front yard in Marysville because he was trying to come up with a down payment to buy a house. Lee worked his day job glass cutting; then came home and cut wood to make products to sell. Paula Rey came by his house to buy a wooden bench set that he had made. She talked to him about the studio tour on Camano and all the other art programs on Camano. “It really pushed me to look for a house on Camano,” Lee says. About a year after moving to Camano, Lee joined the studio tour. He met Elain Iodice, another glass artists who encouraged him to join the tour, Dianne Hill, Jack Gunter, Marc Boutte and the rest of “the crew.” Most of them are still around. Lee is too!
The community of artists on Camano has been the draw. “The cool thing is that it’s a community of artists. It’s almost like a family.” Lee’s artistic journey has been a long one, and we hope the chapters ahead for him keep him on Camano, on our Island of Artists.
Stop by Studio #4, to see Lee’s hand wrought, functional and beautiful, glass! And enjoy this sneak peak of Lee’s gallery