My Books

My Books
These books may be purchased from Schiffer Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target and in many other fine stores.

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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Article on Recycled Glass Artist Jason Mack

Bloomington glass blower shows work at CAC exhibit

By LESLIE RENKEN (lrenken@pjstar.com) of the Journal Star


Area residents pile discarded glass bottles around the Mack Glass sign at Jason Mack's warehouse studio in Bloomington.

This kind of collaboration is exactly what the sculptor wants from his fans.

Probably best-known in Bloomington-Normal for the shimmering glass Christmas tree he makes each year for the community, Mack, 28, likes to create his work with an audience watching. "Half the piece is people being there during the process and contributing, either by watching or by bringing in bottles," Mack said.

Mack works in post-consumer glass. As a cash-strapped sculptor recently-graduated from art school at Illinois State University, he decided to work in recycled glass because it was free. Using less expensive material gives him more opportunity for experimentation and allows him to work big.

What Mack didn't anticipate was how much time he would spend learning how to make the material work for him. Information on expansion and contraction that help an artist work in hot glass are readily available with new glass, not so when pulling beer bottles out of the recycle bin.

"It took me about a year of experimenting to get to the point where I could make the glass do what I wanted," Mack said. "Now I can make it flow like water or thick like molasses, depending on what kind of work I'm doing."

Click here to read the full story.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Green Recycled Glass Tumblers at Target

I just noticed that Target has a set of 4 green recycled glass tumblers available for $19.99.  I love it when recycled glass looks like its original green bottle source.

Click here to visit the Target website.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Top 5 "Do's" of Art Licensing

The ArtBistro website has a great article by one of the stars of licensing, Tara Reed.

Click here to go to Art Bistro

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

My upcoming book is now on Amazon.com

The book can now be preordered from the Schiffer Publishing website (click here).

or at

Amazon.com (click here).

Honk Kong Launches Glass Recycling Program

A 12-month pilot program on source separation of glass bottles was launched at six public rental housing estates in East Kowloon of Hong Kong on Saturday.

Speaking at the launching ceremony, Hong Kong's Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau said the government will further consider arrangements to promote glass recycling in the rest of Hong Kong after reviewing the result of the pilot project.

Recycling bins have been installed alongside the three existing colored waste separation bins in the lobbies or near the entrances of each residential block in the participating housing estates.

The bottles collected from the participating estates will be recycled into glass sand, replacing natural river sand in the production of paving blocks.

Click here to read the full story.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Old Fire Station in Pensacola, Florida to be Used for Recycling

Article by Louis Cooper of the Pensacola News Journal (PNJ.com)

The old Milton Fire Station is going to be "recycled" into a recycling center.

The Milton City Council recently approved plans that will turn the site of the old fire house on Bruner Street into a place for citizens to drop off their recyclable materials and for the Santa Rosa Clean Community System to show off how recycled materials can be used.

On the south end of the parcel, there will be four recyclables receptacles where Milton residents may drop of their recyclable materials, according to John Tonkin, executive director of the Clean Community System

"The park on the north end will be a recycle innovation station," Tonkin said. "We have received a grant from UPS for $10,000 which will purchase recycled plastic benches, garbage cans and picnic tables. It will also include examples of our recycled glass in the landscape."

The UPS grant will also pay for a glass collection container which will allow citizens to segregate their glass by colors. That will build on a $102,800 grant from IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area. In 2010, the Clean Community System used that grant to buy a glass pulverizer to begin the glass recycling program that produces.

Segregating glass by color will allow the Clean Community System to meet customer demands for single-color glass gravel product, Tonkin said.

Click here to read the full article.