By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Ian Dawson has had some dark times in his life.
He’s struggled with alcohol addiction, autism, and difficult relationships, art has been the light at the end of the tunnel. And for the past two years, that glow as come from glass.
Even though he’s only been practicing the craft for two years, he’s already made an impression.
His wine stoppers were chosen for inclusion in the Bowling Green Arts Council’s first Community Supported Art Program. Last week his metal and glass work won top prizes at the Wood County Fair, reprising the success he had last year.
His work is for sale at Myla Marcus winery in downtown Bowling Green and other locations in the area, and he’ll set up booths Sunday (Aug. 13) at the Sunset Jazz & Art Festival on the towpath in Grand Rapids, and in the Black Swamp Arts Festival’s Wood County Invitational Show, Sept. 8-10.
In January 2022, Dawson, 46, moved to Bowling Green from Fremont after ending a nine-year relationship. “I left the house, I left everything,” he said.
“When I got out of my dark relationship, I said I wanted to make nice, beautiful things and make things that make me smile,” he said.
He had been doing black smithing and metal sculptures since 2012. That’s when he stopped drinking. “I needed to do something with my life. I needed something better. Art became my new fixation.”
When he arrived in BG he saw that they had a glass program, one of only 40 in the country. “I took it as a sign that that was something I was supposed to do.”
He started by taking glass workshops at Gathered Glass, Firenation, and the Toledo Museum of Art.
“Mom always told me if you’re an artist you can do any kind of art if you practice enough,” he said.
His mother, Mary Dawson, is a professional graphic designer and works in ceramics.
Dawson threw himself into glasswork. He put in 2,000 hours outside of school working with both faculty, and other glassmakers in the area, including Baker O’Brien, a protégé of art glass pioneer Dominic Labino.
Through former BGSU art professor Nadine Saylor, he arranged to travel, with his mother, to Murano, Italy, the historic glass making center. There he watched and worked with glass masters.
Dawson said he’s still interested in doing metal working. They have a welding shop in the School of Art, right next to the glass studio. He has a metal shop in his garage.
He considering how he could merge the two disciplines.
Dawson comes from a line of people involved in the arts. His great grandfather started a blacksmithing studio at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. His grandparents Gene and Mary Dapogny were founders of the Black Swamp Players. His late uncle James Dapogny, a pianist and musicologist, was an important figure on the traditional jazz scene.
When he was 10, his mother showed him how to throw pots, he said. He liked working with the wheel, but never mastered it. When he was a child, he said, “I didn’t fit in well.”
In the late 1990s he studied computers and business at BGSU and Owens Community College. He had a lawn care service and snow removal business, and did landscape art. He now works at The Garrison in Fremont. They put his skills to work, asking him to transform old beer kegs into art.
It wasn’t until he was 32 that he was diagnosed as having autism. “As a kid, no one understood it.”
Now, he said, “having high functioning autism and being on the spectrum … I believe really helps me immerse myself into my art.’’
And, Dawson said, “art is what’s helped me since I was a kid.”
