I started working glass about 10 years ago when I started hanging out with a good friend and mentor who had been doing it for most of his life.

And then I started focusing on marbles about 5 years ago with the idea of making smaller and more affordable pieces that people could enjoy on pretty much any budget.

I'm Joshua Beach, and this is The Work of Art.

I'm gonna make an implosion style marble with some fumed gold trapped inside.

So I'll reach into my kiln and grab a piece of glass that I prepared and start to melt it down into a ball and begin the process of making a marble.

I'm gonna attach a handle on the backside.

Now I'm gonna start pushing just a little bit to condense this glass down into a ball.

I'm gonna remove my handle so that I can take this ball of glass and flatten it out.

I have a piece of glass with just a little ball of gold on it, and I'm gonna put that into my flame to vaporize it and, get it to stick onto this hot glass.

Now I'm gonna use this clear glass rod to make dots on this and trap the parts of gold that I want to remain in the piece.

I'm just gonna do concentric circles, and I'll start my next circle of dots offset from the others.

And next, what I'm gonna do is I start shrinking this disc down and compressing this pattern.

The pattern is getting smaller and smaller as it gets trapped and gets pushed up into the clear glass.

I'm gonna do some preliminary shaping of my marble with this mold here.

It's starting to take shape now.

Now I'm gonna attach a handle to the backside so that I can finish up the front of this marble.

I'm just gonna go over and inspect it with some bright light real quick to make sure that there's no, anything wrong with the lens.

And then it goes in my kiln to cool down nice and slow so that it stays strong and doesn't have any stress in it.

It's a marble.