In her Silver Lake ADU, this L.A. artist turns glass and clay into something magical

Just astir each country of Julie Burton’s Silver Lake workplace is filled with sparkling solid jewelry — immoderate real, immoderate symbolic — and whimsical ceramic figures inspired by Midcentury Modern design.

Elegant hand-blown solid vases beryllium beside ceramic crater pots connected lukewarm cherry shelves. Bright teardrop earrings bent from metallic tins filled with Japanese cooling beads. In the kitchen, hand-carved ceramic birds, whales, elephants and owls look retired from the counters, surrounded by lidded cache pots and dense candlestick holders that consciousness bully successful your hand. Nature shows up everyplace successful her studio: rocks successful solid jars, pieces of driftwood and tiny “forests” she’s made from glass, brass and walnut.

“I’m a full-time hallucinator without drugs,” Burton says jokingly astir her wide scope of work. “If I’m not making something, I’m ever looking astir and reasoning astir what to marque next.”

A metallic table she recovered connected Craigslist anchors the 546-square-foot accessory dwelling unit, oregon ADU, wherever she works. Architect Peter Kim designed the space, attached to her store successful Silver Lake, to beryllium backstage and afloat of light, with 10-foot ceilings, skylights and solid doors that unfastened onto a ample patio with seating.

Her workspace shows however productive she is. Long, colorful solid tubes capable pails connected the level and her desk. Tools are scattered passim the studio, including a plumber’s torch for melting glass, crockpots for pickling and a dental instrumentality she uses to stamp her logo, VM, abbreviated for Verre Modern, onto her ceramics.

At 56, the Los Angeles autochthonal took an antithetic way to becoming an artist. After earning a grade successful governmental subject from UC Berkeley, she worked astatine Amoeba successful San Francisco and aboriginal joined the manner marque Esprit. “I was expected to beryllium a data-entry person,” she says, “but I taught myself Quark and became a signifier maker.”

In this series, we item autarkic makers and artists, from glassblowers to fibre artists, who are creating archetypal products successful and astir Los Angeles.

She admits she didn’t truly cognize what she was doing. “I person a wont of taking jobs and changing them a bit. I’ve been fortunate to beryllium capable to signifier the jobs I’ve had.”

At 1 point, she considered becoming a prof of ineligible ethics, so, arsenic the girl of 2 lawyers, she applied to instrumentality school. “That would beryllium an absorbing occupation today,” she adds with a adust consciousness of humor.

“Built-in desks, cabinets, shelves and a functioning room with antagonistic seating supply a light-filled artist’s workplace easy convertible to a spacious surviving space,” designer Peter Kim says of the ADU.

Burton melts solid for jewelry with a plumbing torch.

She had ever loved art, particularly glass-blowing, but classes were excessively expensive. On a whim, she besides applied to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, oregon RISD. When she didn’t get into her apical instrumentality schools, she chose RISD instead. There, she majored successful illustration and took a six-week wintertime glass-working people that changed her life.

“I instantly thought, ‘This is the best. I privation to bash this,’” she says. “I didn’t think, ‘Can I bash solid blowing for a living?’” When she realized she didn’t privation to make creation glass, her prof encouraged her to permission and “save $90,000 connected tuition for thing she wasn’t 100% behind.”

When a RISD person introduced her to a glassblower successful Chattanooga who had blown solid connected an lipid rig, Burton moved to Tennessee and worked for the erstwhile merchant marine, making what she describes arsenic “funky glass.”

She aboriginal moved to New York and worked astatine the nonprofit Urban Glass successful Brooklyn. To wage disconnected her pupil loans, she besides waited tables and tutored kids for the PSAT and SAT.

After a person gave her a speedy five-minute acquisition successful lampworking — a benignant of glasswork that uses a torch oregon lamp to melt solid — she got truthful excited that she decided to commencement a jewelry business, though she says she “knew thing astir jewelry.”

Glass necklaces, starting astatine $140, travel successful 135 antithetic colors.

After a brutal wintertime successful New York and arsenic her parents got older, she decided to determination backmost to Los Angeles successful 2003. In L.A., she met her husband, had a lad who is astir to crook 15 and continued to turn her Verre Modern jewelry line. Over time, her enactment expanded to see solid and brass mobiles and partition hangings, which are present sold successful autarkic shops and depository acquisition stores crossed the country.

Designer Carol Young has carried Burton’s jewelry astatine her Undesigned showroom successful Los Feliz for 20 years. Young says that Burton “transforms humble solid into modern heirlooms — simple, elegant, softly precious pieces for women who don’t request the obviousness of gemstones oregon presumption jewelry. My mundane brace are her wide solid Valenti earrings, which someway spell with perfectly everything.”

When she took a ceramics people successful 2015, she started making vases, animals and decor, often hand-building and carving her unsocial vessels portion watching TV successful her surviving room. Like with astir things, she says, she made ceramics her own.

“When I was blowing municipality glass, I didn’t usage accepted Italian glass-blowing techniques due to the fact that I worked for a feline connected a upland successful Tennessee,” she said. “I didn’t cognize thing astir jewelry, but a five-minute lampworking acquisition acceptable maine connected my path. If idiosyncratic who does ceramics for a surviving were to ticker maine bash what I bash with clay, they’d accidental that’s not the close mode to bash it.”

Burton worked successful a workplace connected Spring Street successful downtown Los Angeles for 20 years earlier she and her hubby added the ADU successful 2023. “It was built with the thought that we mightiness unrecorded successful the workplace someday oregon fto a household subordinate unrecorded there,” she says, adding with a laugh: “It’s embarrassingly bully arsenic a moving studio. That is decidedly not however my workplace downtown looked.”

Burton’s room features Inax Japanese ceramic tile and untreated cherry cabinets.

The cutouts successful the obstruction astir her patio conscionable extracurricular the ADU are lined with her ceramics, soil dollars, driftwood and rocks from Burton’s travels. “I’m inspired by nature,” she says.

The one-bedroom, one-bathroom ADU was built connected an unused broadside gait of the ample country lot, truthful the two-car store could inactive beryllium utilized for retention and parking. Architect Kim says, “While converting a store to an ADU tin adhd surviving abstraction oregon rental income, they’re often small, request a batch of structural enactment and instrumentality distant storage.” He adds, “Building an ADU connected unused abstraction lets you support the store and, similar with Julie’s ADU, creates a spacious, backstage beforehand patio connected to her workplace and surviving room.”

Burton looks backmost connected her unsocial vocation way and feels grateful she tin take her ain direction. When she studied illustration astatine RISD, she recalls being surrounded by talented drafters. “I wasn’t the champion illustrator, and I retrieve the prof told maine that fractional of illustrations are ideas. That was inspiring.”

That thought continues to animate her art, adjacent aft galore years.

“I’ve tried welding, woodworking, painting, drawing, glass-blowing, lampworking and moving with clay,” she says astir moving with her hands. “Give maine a medium, and I’ll springiness it a go.”

Burton works connected a facet vessel successful her Los Feliz surviving room.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)