Michelle Kaptur

Michelle Kaptur has been blowing glass since 1975. She came to glass after completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at Pacific North West College of Arts in Portland OR. Michelle worked for ten years learning the basics of glass blowing and then went on to paint for several years. “Painting is where I put together all the composition, color and design stuff that I learned about in school. When I came back to glass I had a much stronger sense of what kinds of design choices I wanted to make and why. I feel my work was - my work - and much stronger after this”.

Michelle has owned and operated her own glass studio, Glass Dancing, in Bend, Oregon since 1994 and worked with Ice Fire Glassworks for several years prior to that.

Her interests include doing things outdoors and traveling with animals. She owned a sled dog team of 9 or 10 years, which took her to Alaska for a winter with her team to help a friend train an Iditarod team. “I thought I would like to run the Iditarod for my 40th birthday but after a winter of training dogs at that intensity I decided it was too much like a job. My dogs had enjoyed distance training and were willing to do this but they were not as enthusiastic as they were for the shorter distances”.

Michelle was also a wilderness ranger on horseback for the US Forest Service for 5 summers packing into the Three Sisters Wilderness four days a week. She still rides her faithful Arabian Snickers anytime she is not in the studio. He is twenty one now and has been her companion since he was a yearling.