Donald Cheeseman shows still life studies inside his Swimming Dog Glass Studio in downtown Snow Hill. The gallery and workspace opened last year.

By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(March 22, 2018) Donald Cheeseman opened the Swimming Dog Glass Studio last summer in Snow Hill, but the gallery and workshop only recently began to take shape.

Cheeseman, 67, spent his first 30 years living just north of San Diego. After relocating to the East Coast, he taught English and art to high school students for more than three decades in Bethesda, Maryland. He moved to Snow Hill three years ago.

A parade of color and light shines through many of the glass pieces of Snow Hill artist Donald Cheeseman, owner of the Swimming Dog Glass Studio.

“It’s just a beautiful place,” he said of the town. “Every place I left was very crowded and hectic. When I had an opportunity to retire, my partner and I moved down here.”

He started working with glass at the turn of the last century.

“I originally started cutting out glass and making stained glass windows,” Cheeseman said. “In about 2004, I got a small kiln and started fusing glass. And I got a couple of commissions, which compelled me to keep going.”

Around 2007, he started teaching glass art to students at Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda.

Today, he produces work that blurs the line between functional and fine art, from traditional glass plates and bowls, to small stained glass studies using frit, or crushed glass, that resemble playful, abstracted still-life paintings.

“Glass has a technical side to it that’s quite extraordinary, which appeals to me,” he said. “For instance, if you’re bringing a piece of glass up to the fused state, you have to raise the temperature at different rates through different temperature ranges and you have to be able to control that very specifically – you can’t go too fast and you can’t go too slow.”

As an extreme example, Cheeseman said the 200-inch Hale Telescope built during the 1940s took three years to cool from a temperature range of about 1,000 degrees, down to 755 degrees.

“The thicker I make glass, the more I have to adjust and control through that specific range, through what’s called annealing the glass,” he said. “If you don’t do that, you’ll set up tension within the glass and that could cause it to crack – or even worse.”

Cheeseman started working on the building last summer, but didn’t officially open his studio until October.

“I’m retired, living on retirement … so I couldn’t do everything at once,” he said. “When I had a little money, I’d build a table or do something of that nature.”

Now that Swimming Dog is open several days a week, Cheeseman said he “absolutely loves it.”

“I had a really nice Christmas, making a variety of inexpensive Christmas gifts that seemed very popular,” Cheeseman said. “I just finished a commission for four large windows that were hung in a retirement facility, and now I’m making sort of springtime stuff.”

He also offers classes and work space within the studio. To inquire, call 301-648-5695, email donc5747@gmail.com or visit www.facebook.com/donald.cheeseman.

“It’s a lot of fun and, if you are interested in it, I can teach you a lot of stuff,” he said. “Once you take a class, once you figure out what you’re doing, I have open studio. You can come in and work – you have to buy your own glass and pay for kiln time – but both those are moderately priced.

“I’ll supervise you, but you’re pretty much on your own,” Cheeseman added. “I have all the tools and I have a workspace. If people want to do this, I would encourage it. Glass looks nice and there’s an enormous amount of things you can do with it.”

The studio is open Fridays starting at noon and Saturdays “a little earlier,” but Cheeseman said he is usually in the building six days a week.

“If I’m here, I turn the ‘open’ sign out and people can see that I’m open. I’ll even throw my little sandwich board out front, so people driving by realize I’m here,” he said. “The place was closed for so long that I think people stopped looking in this direction – I have to catch their attention somehow.”

Visit the Swimming Dog Glass Studio on 302 North Washington Street, near the Blue Dog Café.