Kiss My Glass

The story

Tucked into a low-slung storefront on 7th Avenue in Seabright, Kiss My Glass doesn't look like a modern boutique studio, and that is precisely why it works. Jackie Marr opened the shop over four decades ago, building a non-fussy Santa Cruz institution dedicated to the heavy, precise, and occasionally singeing craft of art glass. Inside, four decades of trade experience show up in floor-to-ceiling racks of colored sheet glass, spools of copper foil, lead came channels, and drawers overflowing with handmade glass beads.

While most contemporary art spaces lean toward sanitized minimalism, this shop stays unapologetically cluttered and industrial. It functions as a supply house, a repair shop for fractured heirloom windows, and a working classroom. In the back, gas-and-oxygen torches sit ready for lampworking—melting glass rods at high temperatures to roll and shape custom beads—alongside wet belt grinders and soldering irons for traditional copper-foil and leaded panel construction.

You come here when you want to learn the physics of glass without any hand-holding fluff. Whether you're learning how to score a straight break on a cathedral glass sheet or solder clean seams on a suncatcher, the instruction is direct, grounded in decades of bench time, and focused entirely on the raw mechanics of the craft.