This was the case for Robert Hoke and Therese Nolan, a husband-and-wife team who have spent 20 years traveling around the country to craft shows while building their business, Metrolux, selling their handmade glass lamps. Their two sons, Raleigh, 17, and Max, 13, grew up “on the road” as well.

A chance meeting over books

It was not glass that initially brought Hoke and Nolan into partnership, but rather a love of books and libraries. After attending an Air Force high school in France where his father worked for NATO, Hoke studied art in Paris for a year. Then he returned to America to study first at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., for over a year, followed by studies at The Ohio State University in clay and glass. He found a job in a factory in Connecticut creating Tiffany-style stained glass lamps.

When his parents moved to Florida, Hoke followed and took classes at Florida State University at Boca Raton. “I took the classes mostly to be able to use the studios,” Hoke says. He supported his studies and his art habit by working at the Broward County Library.

Meanwhile, Nolan, who loved crafts as a kid, had recently moved to Florida after visiting her sister there. Her job hunt led her to the Broward County Library, where she met Hoke.
Fascinated with the process, Nolan was immediately impressed with Hoke’s work in glass and soon began helping him in the studio, initially doing drawing and design work as well as grinding, foiling and soldering. Hoke soon quit his job at the library to build his business making Tiffany-style handcrafted lamps, returning to work at the library when he needed to supplement his income.

At first he did only local shows in a booth constructed from two-by-fours and some blue plastic. The response to his work was good, and he began to expand to more regional and national markets. Nolan quit her job at the library and became a full-time partner in the studio.

As their business grew, so did their family. Their oldest son, Raleigh, was born. In 1987, the family moved to Tennessee into a house on property owned by Hoke’s father. With the space available, they built an 800-square-foot studio. Then Max was born and though Nolan kept working, she was busy with two growing boys.

Finding their own direction in glass and parenthood

Realizing that they weren’t getting into the national and better quality craft shows with slides of their stained glass lamps, the couple began doing more contemporary lamps, fusing and sandblasting the glass, as well as incorporating more metalwork. One of their first popular collaborations came about from hanging out in bars and playing the new video games. Nolan used the space themes of the games as design elements for glass.

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“I feel that flat glass and stained glass are (considered) the ugly stepchildren of blown glass. So we now create our own glass by manipulating flat glass, fusing it with frits, to produce a fresh sheet of glass. Then we cut it like stained glass,” says Hoke.

The couple also uses a mix of metals in their current work. Steel, brass, tin, lead and aluminum are cut, bent, welded, melted, fabricated and colored into a sculptural form that is then integrated with the glass.

With the new contemporary work, they exhibited in shows like American Craft Council Baltimore, Atlanta, Tampa, and Charlotte, Winter Park Sidewalk Arts Festival in Orlando, Coconut Grove Art Fest, Columbus Arts Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Four years ago, Nolan decided she didn’t want to remain at home while Hoke traveled, seeing new sights, meeting new people, and eating out. Though she knew shows were a lot of work, she wanted to be part of it. So Hoke and Nolan bought a large van that is part camper, part cargo van, and hit the road with their sons.

While the boys enjoyed the road trips, visiting museums, galleries and historic sites, their schools were not so happy. “They started complaining when we took the boys out of school, even though they kept up with their work and went to museums. We took them to a show in Chicago, and we got a note that said they had all these unexcused absences,” says Hoke.

Though they liked the schools their sons attended, they decided that home schooling might be a better option for a family that was required to travel in order to make a living. Nolan does most of the teaching, though with home schooling the idea is to encourage independent thinking and studying as much as possible. As part of the requirements of an “umbrella group” for home schooling, approved by the state, home-school students are required to put in several hours of volunteer work per year. Raleigh, the oldest, has been able to earn credit by volunteering to work for local political candidates, developing his own interest in politics and keeping his parents informed.

Both boys are enrolled in the Home Based Education Program of the Clonlara School in Ann Arbor, Mich. The program provides a loose curriculum and a contact teacher. The program also serves as advocate and record-keeper, and provides a high school diploma once the required credit hours in each subject area have been achieved.

When they are on the road, the boys bring their textbooks, as well as make field trips to museums and other sites. When they attend the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, Raleigh goes online weeks ahead of time to look at the schedule of performing artists, checks out their Web sites, and then creates a schedule for each day of the festival.

Max and Raleigh help set up and break down the booth, booth sit, and fetch food for their mom and dad in addition to their daily field trips. Though there are challenges, such as boredom, limited space and privacy, and an abundance of fast food, the boys enjoy the lifestyle. “They are becoming very cosmopolitan kids — eating in fancy restaurants, calling the concierge,” says Nolan.

“Bringing the kids to the shows has been an enriching experience for all of us. It has kept us close as a family, and broadened the experience of our kids. They have a rich social life on the road: Other artists have become extended family for them, and patrons are often charmed by them,” says Nolan. “Those kids run no risk of becoming provincial. They have been all up and down the East Coast and through the Midwest. Geography is something they live, not just read about. Monuments, historical sites, museums, famous buildings they have experienced firsthand, not just seen in a textbook. Maps and navigation are second nature to them. They are neat kids, confident and adaptable. We are very proud of who they have become.”

Working toward the future

Nolan and Hoke have sold work to customers across the country, as well as in places like Newfoundland and Greece, thanks to their Web site (designed by Raleigh), which acts as both catalog and advertisement, and to exposure on Guild.com.

Future plans include introducing their work to finer galleries and eventually relocating their studio to an urban area where they can also have a studio/gallery — an endeavor they have tried in the past. “In 1989 we left everything in Tennessee and moved to Miami Beach to open a gallery. Unfortunately that was the time of the Kuwait invasion. The economy just didn’t support us, so we moved back to Tennessee. We still want to open another gallery,” says Hoke.

For More Information Robert Hoke and Therese Nolan Metrolux 14299 Manchester Pike Christiana, TN 37037 (931) 394-2581 rhoke1@infoave.net www.artlights.com

Hoke and Nolan also want to continue to develop and push the boundaries of their work, which reflects influences from many sources such as science fiction and ’50s’ modernism, as well as increasing the scale and adding more processes. “Change is really important,” says Nolan. “It keeps the work fresh for us and for others.”

They would like to cut back on the road trips, to six a year rather than the current dozen or more. But they are happy with their lifestyle and the choices they have made for themselves and their children.