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July 26, 2008

Glass blower/juggler entertains at Downtown Market

By Charles Oliver

Stephen Kennedy pounded a glass hummingbird feeder on a table to show just how solid it was.

Kennedy had brought a number of glass items created by him and his wife Audrey to the downtown Dalton Market Saturday. He had jewelry pieces and ornaments. But it was the hummingbird feeders that really seemed to get the attention of several customers gathered around his booth.

“It’s funny. I only intended on making one of these for my mother to put it on her patio. So I sent it out to Arizona, not realizing that Arizona is a hot spot for hummingbird feeders. Soon after, I had strangers calling me on a regular basis asking me to send them one,” he said.

The Chattanooga resident says this was his second time at the Dalton market and the hummingbird feeders have proved to be popular each time.

And, yes, the feeders not only look nice. They are very tough.

Kennedy says he was recently selling at a Chattanooga market when a former customer told him she’d accidentally dropped one of the feeders off her patio, some 18 feet onto the rocks below, and all it did was bounce.

Kennedy says his wife introduced him to glass blowing.

“I was living in Las Vegas painting murals and doing different festivals selling food. I met her at one of them. She taught me how to blow glass, and I gave up 27 years of corporate restaurant work to blow glass,” he said.

That was five years ago.

“When I first sat down to make my first pendants, something as simple as a teardrop would take me 45 minutes to an hour,” he said.

When he wasn’t speaking with customers, Kennedy performed with juggling sticks. Using two control sticks, Kennedy twirled a baton around in various patterns.

“I first saw them as a little kid at the Ringling Brothers circus. One of the clowns had them, and I loved it,” he said. “I never saw them again until I was 35 years old. Then, I started playing with them. Now, I make them and sell them.”

It takes him about an hour and a half to make a set of the sticks, which are also know as devil’s sticks, from recycled materials such as old inner tubes.

“I recycle everything I can find,” he said.

Kennedy says it took him about three and a half months to learn to juggle the sticks.

“One of my friend’s kids came over last night. He’s 14 years old. He’d never done them before, and he was spinning them in a hour,” he said.

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