Meet Erin McMillen

Owner; General Manager of The Melting Point

The Melting Point is my baby. I spent seven years researching and designing the business plan that nurtures glass artists and provides them with a place to learn, a place to create, a place to sell their work, and for our own artists, a place of full-time employment.

It’s a labor of love.

I believe that the arts:

• enhance the beauty of the world around us,
• open minds
• are the key to vibrant, thriving communities
• are a tool for transformation
• encourage the expansion of society as a whole.

While I spend my days mentoring artists and running The Melting Point, my medium is paint, ink, and paper.  I use a backward style of painting/drawing. I create the base colors in paint first, then go back in and draw, in my graphic style, what I see coming out of the colors. I never know what I will be creating before I start.My art comes 100% from the soul and is unlike anyone else’s that I have ever seen.

It was Bill Cumming, my life drawing instructor at the Art Institute of Seattle who taught me that art is life personified and that I must appreciate the art that I naturally create instead of trying to be like anyone else.

I Am a Utopian

I dream of an ideal world and do everything in my power to create it. I don’t feel right unless I am creating regularly. I create my paintings because I must. I knit for meditation. I travel to enrich my cultural experiences. I spend a lot of time with my husband and daughter with whom I am very close. I sit with a cup of coffee, simply pondering life, wondering what it’s all about. I’m persistent and driven.

Aside from my family and The Melting Point, I’m most proud of the scholarship program for artists, that I designed for the Robert B McMillen foundation.

If I had a magic wand

…“starving” and “artist” would never be used in the same sentence. I built The Melting Point around my belief that artists should receive fair pay for their work. It is inordinately unfair that an art education, one of the most expensive educations to attain, rewards the graduate with an absurdly low, almost non-existent, pay scale.

Unleash Your Inner Artist

The Melting Point is an education crucible, a portal into the world of glassblowing. Our torch lights the way for new and established artists.

Whether you’re a new enthusiast or an established artist, we’d love for you to come in and experience what great artists can do with hot glass.