Glass artist’s brightest pivots have followed trying times
Portrait by Lauren Rutten
When Hurricane Helene pushed the French Broad River through the small town of Marshall, NC, it ravaged every business on Main Street, filling buildings to the ceiling, smashing wood, windows, inventory, furnishings, and equipment.
Glass artist Kristen Muñoz’s home and studio sits high above the town, and her property was not affected. But when power finally returned, and she saw photos of the wreckage that made Main Street unrecognizable, she was stunned to spot something very familiar.
“I did the lighting for Zuma Coffee a few years ago,” she says. “I made the four pendant lights over the counter and three in the front window. The first photos after the flood, everything in Zuma is gone, wrecked, or covered in mud. Except the glass lights. They were still hanging there, fully intact.”
The Zuma lights were not Muñoz’s only pieces that survived when metal, concrete, brick, and wood did not. She received a message from someone walking through Hot Springs, overcome with grief at Helene’s fury. Then inside the severely damaged Artisun Gallery and Café, she saw Muñoz’s hummingbird feeders, unscathed and beautiful, and they gave her hope.
The Marquee Design Marketplace in the River Arts District was home to dozens of local artists, including Muñoz’s Moon Girl Glass Gallery, where she displayed colorful blown-glass pieces; several of her pendant lights and chandeliers hung from a metal bar overhead. Then the river ripped through walls and rose to the rafters; what wasn’t swept away when the water returned to the river was left in rubble on the silt-covered floor of the 50,000-square-foot warehouse.
When artists were allowed to re-enter the building, they mucked through mud to see if anything could be saved. “When I went into what was left of Marquee, I was reeling,” Muñoz recalls. “I was able to find my space and there, in that mud, was my rainbow chandelier. The metal work was twisted and broken, but the glass globes were fine. I thought, ‘Dang, that’s some strong glass!’”
Ironically, it was at a time in Muñoz’s life when she was closest to being broken that she found the strength to save herself through creating light in the darkness.
Muñoz first felt the pull of glass living in Austin, Texas, when she observed artists flameworking with a torch on glass and was so fascinated she asked to apprentice. Doing that, she learned about the Penland School of Craft in Western North Carolina; she applied for a scholarship for a class. “From the very start, I knew that was my life.”
She left Texas, moved to WNC, and received scholarships to study different techniques at Penland, including stained glass, advanced flameworking, and even blacksmithing. But it was the traditional glassblowing she most identified with. “The first time I pulled a gather out of the furnace, my body was screaming at me, ‘Back away! You’ll get burned!’ And my heart was saying, ‘I don’t care! We’re doing it!’”
Muñoz salvaged materials to construct her own furnace and kiln. She uses quartz mined locally from nearby Spruce Pine, widely considered to be the purest in the world. She began making glasses, bowls, plates, decanters, vases, and brilliant red hummingbird feeders, found representation in galleries in the area, and was building a following. But in 2015, her world shattered. Arrested for possession of peyote — which her church uses as plant medicine and healed her of severe depression — she faced a possible long prison term.
And then one of her attorneys, who had been a fan of her glass art for years, offered representation in exchange for Muñoz creating all the lighting in her new home. The case was won, and a new calling found.
Today Muñoz works with an antiques dealer to reinvent the designs of vintage chandeliers, pendants, and wall sconces. In 2025, she expects to partner with a well-known lighting manufacturer who will co-create her designs and expand her lighting sales.
The day before Helene struck, a woman visiting from Nebraska had taken Muñoz’s beginner glass-blowing class. She was mesmerized by a waterfall chandelier Muñoz created to honor water researcher Veda Austin and purchased it. “The woman’s first name is Helene,” Muñoz reveals, marveling at the wonder of it all. “Of course, I had to look up the meaning of the name. I was floored to discover it means “shining light” and named it after her”
Kristen Muñoz, Marshall. Her work is available at Twigs & Leaves Gallery (98 North Main St., Waynesville, twigsandleaves.com), at Artisans on Main (14 North Main St., Weaverville, on IG and Facebook); and on her website, moongirlglass.com. Muñoz also teaches beginner classes in her home studio in Marshall by appointment; call 828-713-2019 or e-mail moongirlglassworks@yahoo.com.