Shining Light on Sustainability
Shining Light on Sustainability
Julie Conway turns scraps into transcendence, crafting hand-blown pendants from recycled bottles with an off-grid team in Mexico and a hive-minded crew at Everett’s Schack Art Center. Her LUMi Collection proves sustainability isn’t a limit but a lens: lighting that feels good, lasts, and bathes spaces in intention.
Global glass artist’s work a reflection of her values
BY ELLEN HIATT
Glass is an embodiment of life and legacy for artist Julie Conway, channeling the light of well being to spirit and body, and giving expression to values and philosophy. Living true to those values means using recycled bottles and working with an off-the-grid glass blowing shop in Mexico; it means living with a couch that may be older than her, and digging in dumpsters for materials she can put to good use. Her values of sustainability and “walking lightly on the earth” are not limiting her life experience, she says, they’re enriching it.
With the recycled bottles transformed into glowing lighting pendants, and the relationships built in an industry where teamwork and a “hivemind” are essential, she creates beauty, inspired by nature, in her internationally known studio, Illuminata Art Glass Design.
The article continues below.
She draws her inspiration from pyramids, temples and cathedrals, where light is intentionally used for spiritual and healing effects. Through vaulted ceilings and stained glass, light pours in, “charging you with different frequencies,” she said.
Patterns in nature like the dappled light filtered through a forest are replicated in some of her pendant series. Light reflected off water made its way into a crackled glass sconce, selected to show at Venic Design Week. The glass is merely Conway’s medium for refraction and reflection of light, for the expression and capture of energy.
“I shine light through glass in the to make glass more accessible. The LUMi Collection is the summation of home environment or in a hotel lobby that effort—recycled, handblown glass so that it feels good to be around that light. I also strive to make spaces lighting pendants made sustainably for a broader audience. transcendent… I love that word because that is the essence of everything,” she “I’m really talking about frequencies said from her Everett studio in a historic, when I build something. I’m going to bring this into your house and you’re 1909 brick building built to sell farm implements and soon after to hold a going to get to sit under it and eat your casket company. Its high ceilings and meals,”she said.
Some of her customers say the lighting she creates for them rough hewn beams and floors are the perfect backdrop for Conway’s “is the only one that feels good in the creativity.
Conway lives by her convictions.
“And now here I am making lamps out of trash! I love it,” she shared while hovering over a high mound of discarded glass bottles in a video about the LUMi Collection of recycled glass shades, a readymade collection of glass from Illuminata Studio. Though she has glass art in the homes of wealthy people and in large installations in hotels and public spaces, she wanted to make glass more accessible. The LUMi Collection is the summation of that effort—recycled, handblown glass lighting pendants made sustainably for a broader audience.
“I’m really talking about frequencies when I build something. I’m going to bring this into your house and you’re going to get to sit under it and eat your meals,” she said. Some of her customers say the lighting she creates for them “is the only one that feels good in the house.”
Making sustainable choices in her clothing, or housing or work allows her to live purposefully and passionately. Before moving to Everett, she has lived off the grid in a green design LEED certified home in Seattle, driven a hydrogen-powered vehicle, and built and resided in a wind-powered home in New Mexico. In her studio, a 1950s “durable” couch with boomerang shaped arms has been her studio sofa for the past 15 years. Mixed with her vintage chairs found next to a dumpster, “it feels good to be in here.”
“I love collecting vintage things,” she said. “I wear my grandmother’s 1940s leopard coat. It’s in mint condition. If things are well designed and well made, I try to honor that. And of course, I’m a producer. So how can I do that and inspire others?”
The lifelong conviction to sustainability lit a fire under her when she worked in Murano, Italy with master glass artists. After 1,000 years of glass making, a crisis of sustainability for glass artists was brought on by economic changes, including a spike in fuel prices to Asian-manufactured knock-offs of custom art glass. She began working with a biomass engineer and others to find alternative energy sources.
She connected with artists to find “eco solutions.” Conway connected with legendary artists Hugh Jenkins, Charlie Correll and Mary White who were known for their environmental work. Together they formed the nonprofit BioGlass with Christian Thornton from Oaxaca, Mexico where her LUMi Collection is produced. Her efforts are focused on enclosed systems, “giving trash new life.”
When not working in her studio to sort and design with the metal scraps rescued from the discard pile from nearby manufacturers, amidst the bits and bobs of her art stored in stacks of vintage suitcases, she is blowing glass with a team at the Schack Art Center downtown Everett, or traveling to the off-the-grid glass blowing shop in Mexico to produce her designs in 100% recycled glass in furnaces fueled by vegetable oil.
Conway expresses a deep appreciation for her mentors and peers, as well as the broader cast of craftsmen who contribute to the creation of an art piece, from welders to suppliers.
The concentration of glass talent and resources in the Pacific Northwest influenced her decision to base her studio here. She settled in Everett not only because of the Schack’s shared glass blowing studio, but because of the proximity to talent. It takes a skilled team working in synch, in a fast-moving dance around the concrete floor, with hot furnaces lining a wall and molten glass clinging to the ends of hollow poles.
With clear intention, Conway’s breath gives life to an idea, an idea sketched onto paper as a vessel, and etched into her DNA as a life’s purpose.
“Elevating a space with light is my main goal. How can I make it align with my intention to walk lighter on this earth…”
“It starts small,” she said, adding that the intention to lessen our impact runs across all the threads of our life. “You really do gain momentum. When it’s important enough, you will find a way.”
Everett Downtown Walking Tour
Julie’s blown glass lighting will be on display alongside 14 local glass artists from mid-October through the end of 2025 in a storefront walking tour in collaboration with the Downtown Everett Association & Refract Seattle.
The Downtown Everett Association (DEA) invites you to experience a walking tour celebrating the beauty and creativity of Everett-based glass artists, just steps away from the Schack Art Center. In collaboration with local businesses, the DEA has transformed over 10 storefront windows into vibrant showcases featuring the work of renowned glass artists, including Nick Clawson, Manolo Aguilera, KCJ Szwedzinski, Colin Satterfield, Julie Conway, and many more.
Learn more: Glass in Everett: A Window Exhibition of Glass Art – Refract | The Seattle Glass Experience
