- Naval Air Station Whidbey Island is home to the new Pacific Northwest Naval Air Museum.

Open year round, this museum features a lovingly restored World War II Catalina and celebrates naval aviation through exhibits, tours, reenlistments and events.

Information at PNWNAM.org.

- Being surrounded by the Pacific Northwest Indigenous people, I think that's what inspired me to create my own artwork.

I come from the civilization of the Aztecs.

Mexican people are so familiar with that culture.

It's a symbol of being from like, Mexico, you know?

That's something that I kind of want to explore more.

- [VO] The city of Everett was built with big plans for a boom town.

As early as the 1890s, East coast tycoons promoted the seaside setting as “The Pittsburgh of the West.” The promise of bustling waterfront industries with smelters, shipyards and shingle mills drew immigrants in search of steady work.

It was a tactical shift from the area's origins as a fertile peninsula, where the Snohomish tribe had established the Hibulb village ages before.

Glassblower Emmanuel Aguilera-Santos, who goes by Manolo Aguilera, moved from Mexico to Everett as a teen in 2000, adding his own story of immigration and indigenous heritage to city history.

Aguilera first translated a love of salsa dancing into a career, teaching lessons in his backyard dance studio.

But when his passion for blown glass took precedence, he turned his studio into a hot shop.

- As a glassblower, there's something in common with being a dancer and being able to practice, being able to explore ideas, I think it's one of the very most important things to grow as an artist.

- [VO] The space houses a furnace, glory hole and kiln, allowing Aguilera to make art inspired by his Mexican origins.

In the glass world, it's said that if you can make a goblet, you can make anything.

Aguilera created his own take on the form, translating the goblet shape into cactus pads for his signature nopales sculptures.

- I know you spent a lot of time learning the goblet technique.

Is it pretty much the same technique that you're using for the cactus?

- Yeah, so this is one of the pads that I make.

They have, like all these dots.

I saw these dots on Venetian goblets.

And every time I would look at it, to me, they just look like something that, like a cactus would have, like where the needle is on the plant.

So I use that technique to make the pad.

Okay.

So here we go.

The first step, the glory hole is already hot.

So I'm gonna take the lid off.

It's like the sun.

- Yeah!

Wow.

And what is the temperature in there?

- So it's about 2150.

And all the colors that we're going to be using are these type of colors.

Depending on how much I want to use, I chop it there and put it on that kiln and wait until it gets everything up to temperature where I'm able to pick it up with the hot glass.

This is a solid pipe, and before we collect glass we gotta reheat the tip.

As soon as you put the pipe, you can kind of see the glowing.

- Oh, wow.

- It's like collecting honey.

- Yeah.

- [VO] Glass blowing is a team effort, requiring careful choreography and quick steps to ensure the glass stays malleable as it moves from the glory hole to the working bench.

The process entails gathering the molten glass from the furnace onto a metal pipe, blowing a glass bubble, shaping and reheating it.

- Blow.

Blow.

Blow.

Stop.

Blow.

Cap.

That's it.

- [VO] Aguilera learned this dance over the past two decades, honing his skills while working in the hot shop of glass legend Dale Chihuly.

He started there in 2004 at age 18, assisting the team first as a loader, then a gaffer, and in the process fell in love with the art form.

Aguilera is also known for his Mesoamerican heads, which he says are rooted in the Mexican art he saw as a child.

Having recently confirmed his own indigenous heritage with a DNA test, Aguilera feels even more connected to these ancient art forms and faces.

- I grew up seeing a lot of Olmec sculptures in Veracruz.

That image itself represents the place where I was born, and that kind of like inspired me to create those sort of like faces.

Prior to, like, making something I already have a drawing of what the actual sculpture is going to look like.

It does have a lot of elements inspired by Mesoamerican culture.

The first step is make the head, because that kind of like will dictate what size the other elements will be.

- [VO] With headdresses, elaborate jewelry, and even extra skulls, these Aztec and Olmec gods and mystics tell stories from another time.

In Aguilera's hands, they become contemporary and reflect his adopted Pacific Northwest perspective.

- These faces you've combined into your nopales.

Those are pretty massive.

(laughs) - So those faces they were actually inspired by the Aztec culture.

And since we live in Seattle and it's always raining, this is a rain deity.

And I thought about bringing some of that culture here in the Pacific Northwest.

- [VO] In the spring, I visited Aguilera at Pilchuck Glass School, the influential art institute co-founded by Chihuly in 1971.

The storied Stanwood campus is where Aguilera completed one of his earliest artistic residencies.

- So tell me about your first arrival at Pilchuck and how you got here.

- Wow.

So that was in the year of 2008.

I had a friend that worked with me.

His name is Dave Walters.

And he was going to teach here during one of those summer classes.

Dave Walters was able to get me a scholarship for his class.

And I was amazed at how this place was built in the middle of this forest.

I saw a lot of things that I've never seen before in the hot shop, and it was a really cool learning experience.

- You just recently taught a workshop here yourself, which I understand has made Pilchuck history as the first class taught in Spanish and English.

- That's right.

Yeah.

- How did that go?

- It went really well.

The beauty about it was that I was able to connect with so many other artists that we share the same history and experience of being immigrants and coming here to the States and do what we do with glass.

It just made it so unique and special, being able to spend time together.

- And the theme was kind of about personal history.

Is that right?

- Correct.

Everybody has something to say, and I gave them some tools to be able to help them say what they need to say in glass.

There was like, you know, no language barrier.

- And how do you say glass in Spanish?

- Vidrio.

Yeah, at the end of the class, the students were they were like cheering, “Vidrio, vidrio!” - [VO] Blending Italian, Mexican and Northwest sensibilities, Aguilera's glass tells the tale of an artist and an art form migrating to the Evergreen State.

- This series was made possible in part with the generous support of Pacific Northwest Naval Air Museum.