HOT SHOPS ART CENTER - Key Persons

Anne Branigan

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Directors
SVP Member / Business Development, Greater Omaha Chamber

Bill Kenedy

Job Titles:

Treasurer of the Board of Directors

BJ Reed

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Directors
President / Retired, Senior Vice Chancellor, University of Nebraska - Omaha

Doug Bisson

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Directors
Community Planning and Urban Design Lead, HDR

Ed Fennell is a master at forging - connections. Long-lasting, highly-impactful connections. Attached to each is a story (or several) that helps explain how an artist came to live his passion in Omaha and ultimately at the iconic art center that he helped found - Hot Shops Art Center. Inside Ed's studio, Crystal Forge, you'll find him teasing hot, molten glass into beautiful works of art. He was a senior in college when he first became intrigued by the craft of glassblowing. "I had no chance to stay and do anything with it. I just promised myself I would try it if I ever got the opportunity," Ed says. A few years later, the opportunity arose. After getting involved with the Nebraska Crafts Council, Ed met renowned sculptor and glassblower Ray Schultze and made that first of many pivotal connections. "I got to try glassblowing and I was hooked. But I had to figure out how to do it," he says. "I hobnobbed around with other people and found Tony Curiel. He was blowing glass, but his furnace was down. So, I helped him rebuild it and get going again. I was surprised at how many people came out of the woodwork to blow glass in front of me after I helped build the furnace." As Ed honed his glassblowing skills, the father of then-young children found himself spending more and more time at Tony's hot shop. He says he "decided to pull together my materials and build a furnace at home and so I could work there and have more time with the kids, Plus, they could help me and that was kind of fun." While Ed no longer teaches, classes are still held from those he has instructed in the past. The public can have a very basic experiential lesson, or, for those interested in pursuing it more seriously can attend a two-day workshop. Students learn the basics of glassblowing and develop their glass shaping skills. Now, exactly twenty years after the purchase of that old mattress factory, Ed is excited about the bold, next phase in the life of the Hot Shops - its pivotal transition into a nonprofit organization. The move will allow the center to expand its programming, upgrade its building and sustain its purpose well into the future.