Baron displays her original creations at the gallery space in Flame Run — graceful blown glass vessels with intriguing ornamentations, including anemone-like tendrils on the lips of some vessels and daisies on the exteriors of others. Her tasks sum up neatly the dichotomy inherent in a working hot shop — the need to balance the commercial with the creative, the fine art with financial necessities.

Baron first was exposed to hot glass while she was still an art student at Manual High School. She followed up by studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art. “I took my first elective class (in glassblowing) and knew right then that ceramics just wasn’t going to do it,” she says.

She graduated in 2002, just after Glassworks opened, and was glad she’d be able to come home to pursue her dreams, something she hadn’t thought possible before. “When I was in school, I had no intention of coming home” because there were few opportunities, she says. “Considering what’s happened in the short amount of time since then, it’s pretty incredible.”

Baron said her work is influenced by early life forms – tendrils, spores and mushroom caps -- but she stops short of saying what the forms actually are.  “The pieces are a bit ambiguous. I like to leave it to the viewer to draw her own conclusions about this work: Is it plant, animal or some form in between,” Baron said.

Since earning her degree, Baron has served as a teaching assistant at the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle and the Penland Crafts School in Penland, N.C. She worked at Louisville’s Glassworks before joining Flame Run in 2004.