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Blast of inspiration

Frank Howard went from carving headstones to creating head-turning, functional art.

By KATHRYN HELMKE
Published March 24, 2006

But Frank Howard's booth was filled with the soothing sound of cascading water. For the 10th year in a row, Howard and his wife, Gloria, were there for all 11 days of Plant City's Strawberry Festival.

They weren't selling makeup, candy or knickknacks, like other booths. They sell art - handcrafted, made-to-order art by Howard.

As chief executive blaster of Creative Sandblasting, Howard creates scenes of nature, sea life, people, anything, on glass. He'll use steel, wood or nickel, if that's what the customer wants.

Disney World did.

Howard created more than 100 steel elevator doors for the entertainment giant.

He does mainly doors and windows, but he'll also make signs or tabletops and put whatever the customer wants on them. In the last year, he added waterfalls.

Howard, 50, started out carving headstones. More than 20 years ago, he saw some sandblasted glass at a home show. It uses all the same equipment as headstone carving, so he started experimenting.

Thirteen years ago, he made his move to working full time on glass, and now he ships pieces all over the world.

The shift to full-time artist was scary, he said.

His wife did her part. "I kept my day job," she said.

But only until the business got so busy that she quit her job as a school bus driver to help her husband.

For the first five years, revenues doubled each year. The risk paid off.

A double set of doors made it to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and Howard worked on the 2012 Tampa Olympics Committee, which tried to bring the Summer Games here.

His oddest request came from a lottery winner, who built a new house with his earnings. He asked Howard for a scene of the evolution of man, depicting the lottery winner as the fully evolved human - but dressed up with a bag of money and a Rolls Royce.

His most popular figures? "Egrets and herons pay the bills," but he can do anything: underwater scenes, a geisha, a strawberry. Doors, windows and showers are his most popular panels.

Howard uses three techniques: etching, which is two-dimensional; shading, which has some shadows; and carving, which is a deep cut into the glass to create a three-dimensional scene.

He transfers his designs to a stencil and blasts a mixture of high-pressure air and sand through a nozzle. The nozzles can be the size of a pin, for intricate work. Or they can be almost too big to hold.

The carving takes a long time because it requires multiple steps and layers of stencils. A dolphin and her baby will take 10 steps, he said, and the scales of a fish require patience.

An etched door costs about $300, a shaded door $600, and a carved door $1,000. If it's lighted, the cost increases to $2,500.

Howard can achieve the greatest depth on his multipanel pieces. A panel of tropical leaves combined with a panel of birds and water and a panel of the sunset create a scene of the beach. The three lighted panels sell for $6,000.

Most of the pieces he brings to the festival are for display only. Because he mostly does custom-ordered panels, he uses this event and the Tampa Home Show to hand out a lot of cards.

Then he returns home to wait for the phone calls. He never knows when they'll come.

Someone called recently to place an order, five years after seeing his work at the Strawberry Festival.

Maybe that's what will happen with Sue Thomas of Winter Haven. She saw Howard's work at a previous Strawberry Festival and was back looking at his displays on opening day this year.

"I couldn't afford it," Thomas said.

But she knows what she wants if she ever can. She likes the dolphins, and she knows right where she wants them to go.

[Last modified March 24, 2006, 10:50:54]