Willow Glen Resident

Business

Weathered ukuleles, glass art part of eclectic mix at Parrot Studio

By Michael Rizzo

Walking past the shop at 820 Emory St. that was once San Jose's post office in the College Park area of the city, passersby can't help but wonder.

The storefront displays stained glass windows and glass sculptures, along with a conspicuous collection of weathered ukuleles.

Inside Parrot Studio, which celebrated its 30-year anniversary Feb. 16, is an eclectic mix of history, art and culture, kept by an equally eclectic glass artist, Keith Bramer.

When Parrot first opened in the Rose Garden neighborhood, Bramer and his then-business partner, Mark Anderson "battled through it, waiting for the phone to ring." They were counting on the five-year mark as the tell-all for whether the shop would survive. But after 10 years, Bramer felt even better. To date, he says, "the phone has never stopped ringing."

Bramer's bread-and-butter craft, as some in the glass community would call it, is privately contracted architectural stained and leaded glass. His commercial success, though, has garnered him the resources needed to pursue a more artistic side with glass sculpture.

He's done work for the late Charles Schultz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, as well as eBay, the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and several San Jose residents, businesses and community centers. The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art exhibited his work in 1993, but most of his sculptures find their way into galleries in Hawaii, Bramer's home away from home.

Now a one-man operation, Bramer's studio is a testament to a few-decades-old trend called the glass-studio movement, says Cassandra Straubing, professor for the glass department at San Jose State University.

Glass used to be a factory-only product, and workers were trained to know only one step of the assembly-line procedure. But the early '60s brought a revolution to the art form, and serious artists began mastering the process from start to finish. At the time, only a handful of trade masters were scattered throughout the world, so most present-day glass artists have had to perfect their craft methodically and by themselves.

Single-handedly doing all of Parrot's design work, installation and bookkeeping--with the occasional hired hand for big projects--Bramer says he's just as happy on his own.

"I like working by myself," he says. "I don't want to have to look over anybody's shoulder. I'm very picky."

In Bramer's business, you have to be. Glass isn't the easiest material to work with, and creating timeless works of art is all about trial and error.

For many years, the kiln, a furnace used to melt and cast glass, was only available in the industrial market, so many studio artists, including Bramer, had to build their own. For 23 years now, Bramer has kept a log of each time he's fired his kiln, the temperatures used and the rates of climb and descent.

"Even to this day," Straubing says, "glass blowing is not a science. It's still completely an experiment."

Thanks to his meticulous records, if ever things do go wrong, Bramer is able to retrace his steps.

"Opening the kiln is like Christmas morning--when it works," he says. "When they're broken, it's horrible. It's a very anxious feeling waiting to hear that pop."

Bramer has spent most of his working life in glass shops. At first, he was a floor-sweeper, but he quickly became an apprentice, learning cutting and installing. He moved up to journeyman and worked with glass for automobiles, tabletops and windows.

Bramer calls glass his "safe" medium, but he's well known for his artistic designs on ukuleles. In 2000, he used old lithograph tins for such products as Folger's Coffee and Spam to encase and restore cheap, broken ukuleles. The series was displayed in an exhibit at the Volcano Art Center in Hawaii and was featured at the Ukulele Hall of Fame in New Jersey.

Bramer's passion for ukuleles spawned from a wedding present from his wife, and then he just couldn't quit.

"I promised my wife I'd stop collecting at 100," he says, "but I was never able to."

He's now amassed more than 600, many of which are on display in his studio. He keeps other collections inside as well--early Catholic statues, egg cups, oil cans and Hawaiian novelties.

"I might be locked up in here working," he says, "but I can be anywhere in the world."

Bramer been a fixture in the community even longer than Parrot. He grew up in the neighborhood and moved in upstairs of 820 Emory St. when he was 18. He's been calling the place home for 35 years.

"I don't know how to move," he says. "I've never lived in an apartment. I moved in here and never left. It's a great commute to work--just down the stairs. And I never forget anything at home."

He married his wife, Julie, 14 years ago, and the two now live there together.

Although his reputation preceded him, Bramer's connection to the community is what has kept longtime customer Lori Leonard, a resident of San Jose's Naglee Park, coming back. She remembers the first time he came to her home.

"Having lived in the same neighborhood Keith had grown up in, it was pretty funny--I had the same stove his mother had, and he grew up with the same-pattern dishes that were in my sink. We immediately had this bond."

She's contracted with Bramer three times, either for restorative work or window design and installation.

"The windows are phenomenal," she says. "We absolutely love them. Over the years, we've developed a friendship with Keith and his wife, and Keith is a wonderful person. It doesn't get any better than Keith."

Even outside of his profession, Bramer has something about him that draws people to him.

Alen Masic, 19, moved next door to Bramer along with his parents and brother, Ado, as a Bos-nian refugee almost a decade ago. Since no one in the family could speak English, Masic was lucky, he says, to discover Bramer.

"He would do anything for us," Masic says, "and he's just a great friend. I can tell him stuff I wouldn't tell my parents."

Over the first year that the Bramers and the Masics became acquainted, it happened naturally that Bramer took Alen and Ado under his wing. He helped out with school work and college paperwork--all kinds of "red tape" that would be hard for foreign-born people.

"One of them wrote an essay a long time ago for high school," Bramer says, "and he did it on me. It just floored me. You don't know what kind of an effect you have. And even though there's a really big age difference, we're still really good friends."

Every now and then someone with a little curiosity will step into Parrot Studio. He'll share his collections with them, show his work, and tell all kinds of stories. Bramer doesn't plan on ever giving it up.

"Any other place wouldn't be home," he says. "I really am lucky that I get to do this -- and that I get to keep doing this, that the phone keeps ringing, and that I have all these people in my life."

Contact Parrot Studio, at 408. 294.4494.