In the Spotlights 2014 | Page 45

Lampwork bead artist Judith Billig

Q: Can you tell us a bit of the beginning of your career as a glass artist?

My passion with glass started originally on “the other side”: my hobby was jewelry design, and sold my finished designs in a local gallery in Auckland, NZ.

When I discovered lampwork beads through my local bead shop and Ebay, I was hooked right away and fell in love with glass beads and lampworking.

I was determined to learn it, however, at that time there were no classes available in the country that we were living, New Zealand. But when we moved to the US in 2008, I signed up right away for a lampworking beginner’s class, and the second weekend after our move to Redmond, WA, I was already melting glass for the first time.

From that moment on I could only think about glass beads, and it took just a couple of weeks to set up my first studio in our garage.

Q: Do you work full time as a glass artist? On your blog I’ve read that you started your career in IT. Was the transition to your new career as a glass artist difficult?

Yes, I do work full time as a glass artist – or let’s say after being a mom, my second full-time job is being a beadmaker. Yes, I was working in IT as a database programmer and Project Manager, before our first daughter Charlotte was born in 2007.

Once I was a mom, I did not return back to the “corporate” work force, as we planned from the beginning to have more than one child and also it was always clear for us that I want to be for a longer time a stay-at-home-mom to take care of the children.

Lampworking slowly morphed from being a hobby to a part-time job once our second daughter started preschool and kindergarten. I had more time at hand, and it was just a natural progression, as I knew that lampworking was

my passion and I did not want to return to IT, if possible.

The transition was not difficult, as it was just a very slow, but natural process from being an IT professional, to a young mom, then starting off as a hobby, and over the years increasing the time that I spent with my lampworking business up to the point that I realized, this is now a full time job