I'm based between Colorado, North Carolina and New York. My relationship to creativity began with Legos. Skateboarding taught me how to relate to the world through the artistic voices I admired. I was captivated by the excitement of glass work and began apprenticing in a factory setting around age 16. I attended Pilchuck Glass School shortly before making the jump to the mecca of glass working: Seattle, Washington. It was there that I had the honor of working with the renowned artist Martin Blank. In the span of five years, I absorbed many aspects of the art making process, including shipping, metal fabrication, and cold working. Subsequently, our team collaborated on the color design team for Chihuly Inc. 

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I continue to make and exhibit my work at a high level but as the years roll by, I grew to search for other mediums of expression. I built a tiny house, retrofitted several motorcycles, worked as a LED Tech, print model, built a coffee shop in a gondola and the list goes on. I needed to articulate my ideas more clearly with the help of design, typography, video and technology. In 2019, I enrolled at School of Visual Arts and earned my BFA in Design. It’s really sharpened up my creative voice. Recently, I’ve been doing skateboarding stunts incorporating molten glass, and the rest is simply folklore.

Master glass sculptor James Spehler has a profound connection with nature and wildlife. Living in the Rocky Moun-tains of Colorado has given him knowledge and a deep appreciation for wildlife and their habitat. The great inspiration and powers James finds in nature are blended into his in-tense passion to capture the realism of wildlife in his glass sculptures. By show-ing the fine details of animal anatomy, his work depicts the spirit and move-ment of life found in the animal world. Glass wildlife sculptures by James are one of a kind. Each piece is hand-crafted by melting solid glass rods in the intense flame of a torch. The hot glass is sculpted through the use of primitive hand tools. Molds are never used. The resulting sculpture captures the vitality and beauty of nature, in addition to James's immense love for the nature he studies.