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I discovered the Internet in 1997. It was about a year after I’d completed my army service – serving in the Israeli army is mandatory for citizens turning 18; I had served as a secretary / coffee maker in the artillery force for a year and nine months and surprisingly enough, pretty much enjoyed it most of the time. I was living with a roommate in a flat in Jerusalem, working at various jobs and trying to find my path in life. I knew I wanted to do something design-related, but I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get there. A friend of mine kept telling me about the wonders of Internet chatrooms and insisted that I give it a try.
The whole thing sounded kind of boring to me, if not silly, but one day I gave in and sat down at her computer – I had used computers for different purposes at work, mostly typing letters, but I didn’t have one of my own. She showed me how to go to Yahoo.com and search for anything I wanted. As soon as the colored graphics began downloading to the screen, I thought to myself: This is it. This is what I want to do. I am going to be a web designer.
Less than a week later, I went out and bought my first computer.
I spent the next year teaching myself some basic HTML programming and how to use different kinds of graphic software. I spent my days at boring office jobs and my nights on my computer at home, embarking on a journey towards becoming one of those weird web freaks who never go outside. I had found my path. In the summer of 1998, a time when the hi-tech bubble was inflated with promises and people who knew both HTML and Photoshop were a rare commodity, I began sending out resumes for just about any position having to do with the Internet. I was hired at Walla, Israel’s largest web portal, as a junior designer / web monkey person. I moved to Tel Aviv that summer, to be close to the office. “I have the coolest job in the world”, I thought to myself at the time. “They let me play around with Photoshop and surf the web all day – and then they pay me for it!” I was fascinated by this shiny new world and eager to learn new things.
As the years went by, I became a “real” designer – no more webmonkeying – and later, a team leader. And then, the bubble burst. Salaries were cut, people were getting fired left and right - the whole atmosphere had changed. I worked there until 2003 – five whole years, the longest time I’ve ever done anything. Those were good years. Most of the time, Walla had been a fun place to work. But I was beginning to feel bored. It was time for me to start my own business as a freelance designer.
“Are you out of your mind?!” Some people demanded to know. The hi-tech market was still in miserable condition. “You have a good, steady job at a nice company – and you’re just going to walk away from it? At a time like this?”
But I just knew it was time. And I was convinced that I could find enough work to support myself. I was right. The bruised market, unable to pay the high fees that most large design studios were demanding, turned out to be thirsty for freelance web designers. I worked at home for two years. Freelancing had its advantages and disadvantages. I liked choosing my clients and work hours, but as time went by “working at home” turned into “living at work”. I desperately wanted my life back.
In March of 2005, I found a solution to the problem – I decided to open my own design studio. It had been my dream ever since I started working at Walla, and I was amazed at the fact that I could actually do it. The time was right again; I rented a small office space with a couple of office-mates and decided to name my studio “Z-kit” (zikit means ‘chameleon’ in Hebrew). I was very excited, running around buying office supplies, meeting new clients and painting the walls of my office a bright lime green, my favorite color at the time. I moved in to the office and started doing business at normal business hours and at a much larger scale. I was hiring junior designers to help me out with the workload.
Months went by. My work was quite stressful, but on the bright side, I was able to move into a nicer apartment - and for the first time in my life, buy my own furniture. I had a lot of fun picking things out. One of the items was a coffee table from Ikea; a wooden table with compartments on top which I thought was very cool. I tried putting different things in the compartments to see how it would look. Going through some old junk, I found a small collection of glass marbles in a sandwich bag – a gift from someone I had a crush on in sixth grade. That might look cool, I thought to myself. Come to think of it, I had always loved marbles. I tried it out and it did. But I needed more marbles – many, many more marbles. The ones I had were barely enough to fill half a compartment, and there were eighteen of them in the table. So I began looking for more marbles – cleaning out all the toy stores in the area took no time. I still needed more, lots more. In a weird way, I was obsessed with filling the entire table up with marbles. I was thinking about marbles all the time and I just couldn’t explain to myself why. I started ordering them online. In one of my Google searches, with the keywords being ‘glass marbles’, I came across a sponsored link to Gil Raphal, a glass supplier and school right here in Tel Aviv. The link said something like “Learn to make glass beads!”
What? You can MAKE glass beads? Since I was a small child I had always loved and collected beads – wherever I was, whatever I was doing, there were always beads somewhere in the background - but I had literally no idea you could make glass ones by hand. I clicked the link and read about the different courses they offered. I thought it might be cool to try one out sometime.
Back to reality. Within a few weeks, my new apartment was fully furnished, my new table was filled with marbles, taking a lampworking course was an idea in the back of my head and design work kept piling up. My business was very successful. I had everything I’d always wanted and I’d managed to achieve it all on my own, against all odds. I was proud of myself for that. I still am. But I just wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be. The phone seemed to never stop ringing; clients never seemed to be happy before they’d put me through hell; payments almost always came in late and stress levels kept on rising.
Maybe this would be a good time to try that lampworking course, I thought to myself. Just to try something new and different, expand my horizons, that sort of thing. What have I got to lose? So I signed up for the next course, which was to begin in November of 2005.
Gil Raphal turned out to be a fascinating place, with shelves upon shelves stocked with different types of glass and materials in a dazzling array of color. And yet, during a coffee break after the first hour of the class, I declared to my fellow classmates: “This just isn’t for me!”
After an hour of hearing about all the safety hazards involved in melting glass on a torch, with confusing terms like “COE” and “annealing” and “ventilation” flying past my ears, I was beginning to feel like I had voluntarily signed up to one of those boring high school chemistry classes I’d been so happy to have left in the distant past. I returned to the class after recess, open-minded enough to give it another try before checking if there was any way I could get some of my money back. We were given mandrels coated in bead release and rods of black Moretti glass; torches were lit with intimidating-looking flames and it was time to try to make a bead.
Needless to say, I never asked for my money back. I went home that evening with a pocketful of crooked little black shapes with holes, absolutely excited and eagerly waiting for next week’s class. We had been given starter kits to work with at home, including a Hot Head torch, a small gas tank and a collection of 10 half-rods of glass in different colors. But there was absolutely no way I was going to try that; the unnatural concept of lighting a fire indoors scared me half to death. I was just taking the course for fun.
I remember that night, I took out a glass bead bracelet I had bought in Paris a few years earlier. The beads were of various shapes, black and white and clear with sparkly goldstone and they looked so beautiful compared to my pitiful little black shapes. I wondered if I’d ever be able to make such nice beads.
After the second class and a week of excessive web research, I looked at that bracelet again. These are crappy beads from China, I suddenly understood. Sure I could make such nice beads. I stuffed the bracelet in the back of a drawer. Suddenly, I was so eager to make more beads that I was able to overcome my fear of fire. I opened up my starters’ kit and managed to attach everything that needed to be attached and light the flame. I began to make beads at home, and pretty soon I was doing it in all my spare time. I was hooked. There was no turning back.
I feel very lucky to have had the talented and experienced Amnon Elbaz as the teacher of my course. I am glad he made me sit through all those safety precautions and practice my first beads with nothing but a black rod. Not only did I receive an excellent base to start from, but I also discovered Amnon and his lovely wife Robyn to be two of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met. I am proud to have them as friends.
In the meantime, things at the office weren’t going too well. New clients and new projects were still pouring in on a regular basis, but I was slowly but surely losing interest. Tasks that had once been quick and simple were becoming difficult and tedious. Emotionally, I was beginning to feel helpless. One of my most difficult moments in life was having to look my dream in the eye - everything I had built and planned for – and admitting, frankly, that it just wasn’t the dream any more. “I just don’t want to do this any more”, I told my amazed and shocked office-mates. That was the only way to put it.
I didn’t give it up right away. I tried taking in different kinds of projects, different kinds of clients, all different configurations but nothing seemed to sit right any more. It had been eight years of web design and I was as burnt out as a person could be. I was feeling lost. I did not know how to get my motivation back and all I wanted was for the phone to stop ringing. A few months later, in March of 2006, I decided to pack up my office, take my business back home and be a freelancer again. My glass beads were getting better; I thought I would try selling them on eBay sometimes – and maybe, if I was lucky, be able to take on a little less design work. It was a confusing time in my life, but I knew one thing for sure – I wanted to have more time to make beads.
My first auctions went surprisingly well. I would have been ecstatically happy just to sell the first bead sets for their starting price, but to my sheer amazement, different buyers actually seemed to want them. I had the advantage of knowing quite a bit about e-commerce and online marketing, so I felt completely comfortable in the new-to-me eBay environment. Things were going smoothly and I was beginning to feel very lucky. It was like the course of my life had led me exactly to where I was supposed to be.
My last design projects can only be described as difficult ordeals; I had to push myself through them when all I really wanted to do was to make more beads. Just a few months later, eBay sales were going well and one day I decided to take the leap, quit web design completely and try to live as a full-time beadmaker.
“Are you… out of your MIND?!” Inquiring minds wanted to know, again. “Wasn’t the whole glass thing supposed to be something like… a HOBBY?”
“It was”, I replied, “but now it is something else.”
I’m just going to make it work, I told myself. It just has to work. It has to.
I told people that if it didn’t work, I would apply for a job at a bank or a restaurant. Anything but web design.
But it did.
And the rest is history.
The world of glass beads is a fascinating, magical world of color and light, shape and form, fire and gravity – and the possibilities are endless. I feel very fortunate to have stumbled across it by chance. Sometimes it truly amazes me, how much my life has changed in a year. Today I am able to support myself on not only my own creativity – but on actual fun! For the first time in my life, I feel like an artist. I am extremely grateful to my teacher, my new “glass friends” who I’ve met over the past year and of course – my lovely buyers, who have supported me in fulfilling the new dream. I look forward to many years of creating with glass… who knows what the future could bring?
Life is strange. Sometimes, in a good way.
Sarah Hornik
October 2006
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