Wisconsin Life

[gentle piano and bell music] - Jason Mack: What stands 36 feet tall, 17 foot wide at the base, has 3,000 pounds of glass on it?

[bright bell and string music] There's nothing else like it.

It's kind of my own invention.

My name is Jason Mack, creator of the world's tallest glass tree.

You really can't ask for a better backdrop for the glass tree than Yerkes Observatory.

– Attendee: Really cool.

– Jason: Thank you!

When the community comes to the event, they actually have the opportunity to put the glass on the tree.

And you're gonna take another step closer to the tree.

And then you're gonna let the glass drip down to the tree.

We gather the glass out of the furnace on a gathering iron, and we gather, you know, about two pounds at a time.

And just let the glass drip off the end of the pipe, and then the tree takes it around.

All the glass that we use to create the tree is donated by the community.

There's a nice blue one right there.

That's what we're looking for.

[glass shattering] We crush it up, shovel it in the furnace.

[furnace roaring] [glass clanking] - Wow!

- Yeah, so that's 2,000 degrees in there.

So you can see it when I dip the pipe in, it's just kind of like dipping a honeycomb stick into a jar of honey.

You can take a step closer and go a little higher if you want.

We add glass to it for about seven to eight days.

It takes about 3,000 pounds of glass to really cover the frame.

The star is five feet in diameter.

Placing the star onto the tree is kind of a nail-biting process, honestly.

So we're lifting it up almost 50 feet off the ground to make room to drop the star on.

Slow, slow, all right, a little bit more.

Plus, we're doing it in front of hundreds of people as they watch.

The tree itself is 31 feet, and then once we put the five-foot blown glass star on it, it reaches a height of 36 feet.

[crowd cheering] One question I get a lot is, "What do you do with the tree after Christmas?"

We pull all the glass off the steel frame, and I remelt that glass, and I make about a thousand small spun glass trees.

So, that's one thing.

I love the whole life cycle of this project, how you're building something and then you're tearing it down, and then you're building something new with it.

Here you go, step on up.

Hold it up in the air.

I hope people get a sense of inspiration from this project.

I'm really kind of fortunate that this project has really struck a chord, and it's been a fun ride with this one sculpture idea.

I'm doing what I love to do.

[bright music]