BINGELY TV/STREAMING

THE DARK WIZARD

HBO Original

HBO MAX

We’ve been enjoying the 4-part docuseries, The Dark Wizard which showcases a raw look at Dean Potter, one of world’s most influential and controversial climbers, BASE jumpers, and highline walkers. We see his rise in the conventional way of the sport, becoming a rockstar in his field with a number of sponsorships such as Patagonia, but also his downfall. The need to push for greatness while battling mental illness. He also starts seeing that although he was a trailblazer, he was seeing the rise of a new kind of climber as Alex Honnold and other athletes in this sport lend their thoughts and voices to this piece. Throughout the series, you will see stunning feats of athleticism, amazing views, and the struggle one finds to truly be comfortable in their own skin.

MILLION DOLLAR SECRET

Netflix Originals

Netflix

Sometimes you just want to watch a series that lets you watch competitive strategies while being in a luxe setting. Million Dollar Secret is back for S2 and as we watch to see how $1 Million dollars keeps getting shifted between the players while pretending that they don’t have it, we enjoy seeing how they try to conceal their identities and strategies.

Just like in 1, Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, John Wick 2) is back to manage the competitions that are held at The Stag, a luxurious destination. As of the release of this issue, all episodes will be available to stream so that you can do a proper binge as there are a number of moments that you’ll enjoy watching.

SAIGON

iHeart Podcasts

Spotify

We enjoy an immersive audio experience and Saigon, an iHeart Radio podcast takes us to Vietnam. We learn that this podcast focuses on love, blood, and revolution. Starring Kelly Marie Tran (Passenger List, Sweet Tooth, Central Intelligence) and Rob Benedict (The Boys, Leverage: Redemption, Central Intelligence), this podcast is adapted from the best selling novel of the same name by Anthony Grey.

We learn about the tensions that exist in French-colonial Saigon as well as in the country at large! Set in 1936, we meet an American journalist, Joseph who is reunited with his childhood friend, Paul who is now a French policeman. In reconnecting with him at a tennis match, he is reintroduced to Lan, a woman who will shape Joseph’s destiny.

We see how Lan’s brother rejects hus wealthy upbringing and joins Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary cause which changes everything through WWII, Japanese occupation, Vietnamese nationalism, and America’s war in Vietnam. This podcast traces how personal passions and family loyalties are swept into the tides of history.

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see BINGELY TV/STREAMING in mag.

ATHLEISURE LIST | F1 ARCADE LAS VEGAS

You don’t have to wait for the next Formula 1 Heineken Las Vegas Grand Prix taking

place Nov 19 - 21 2026, you can always enjoy heading to F1 Arcade Las Vegas, located in The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. Guests can enjoy an unparalleled social gaming experience built around the venue’s full-motion Formula 1® racing simulators! You can also enjoy an elevated culinary and beverage offerings.

This venue spans 21,000 square feet across 2 levels. There are a number of semi-private, private rooms, and full buyouts for up to 690 guests. You can enjoy 87 bespoke racing simulators that are full-motion and designed specifically for their venues. Guests receive haptic feedback (vibrations for off-track excursions), custom-designed steering wheels and softwear that offers varied skill levels from Rookie to Elite. They also have 3 permanent bars, a portable bar, and 19 large televisions.

We suggest that you enjoy their Dynamite Fried Chicken (chili, lemon aioli), Impossible “Bulgogi” Tostada (Gochujang, shaved cabbage, kimchi, avocado cream), and Chipotle Tiger Shrimp Tacos (pickled daikon, cucumber, ginger, ponzu).

Having a great night out means pairing these savory bites with great cocktails. We suggest trying the My Night in Vegas (rye, ginger, yuzu, celery bitters, blueberry peat foam), She’s in the Lead (cucumber and rose gin, lemon, blueberry wine, rose, egg white), and Sparks Will Fly (rum blend, coconut, chamomile, lime, aromatic bitters, sparked spices).

For those that are looking to enjoy a great beverage, but without alcohol, there are a few drinks that we suggest that you should have in mind. Their Zero-proof Designated Drivers include Mule in the Paddock (Almave Mule, spiced ginger, lime, soda), Cool Down Lap (Pentire Adrift Negroni, Coastal Spritz, Roots Divino Rosso, Mallorca Melon) and the Phantom Overtake (Pentire Seaward Paloma, Cucumber, Cordial, grapefruit, dill air). This is just a sampling of the menu offerings which are filled with various options.

For those who may not be able to be in

Las Vegas, F1 Arcade has a number of locations which include the UK (London in One New Change and Birmingham in City Centre), Boston Seaport, Washington DC Union Market, Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta, and Chicago.

F1 ARCADE LAS VEGAS

The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace

3500 Las Vegas Blvd S,

Las Vegas, NV 89109

f1arcade.com

IG @f1arcadeusa

PHOTOS COURTESY | F1 Arcade

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see ATHLEISURE LIST | F1 Arcade Las Vegas in mag.

ATHLEISURE LIST | 1898 THE POST + PORTER'S HOUSE

Belgium Hospitality Brand, 1898 a noted group is set to launch their latest project, 1898 Porter’s House which will debut in Sept 2026. They have created a waterfront retreat in historic Ghent that is a luxurious townhouse. Rooms and suites can be booked individually or you can secure the intire property for the most private experience. In addition, you can opt to include bespoke butler service, VIP concierge arrangements, and private chef experiences upon request.

The newly refurbished 1898 Porter’s House is steeped in history. The building presents a striking example of Gothic Revival architecture, its pale stone façade punctuated by symmetrical rows of tall, arched windows that allow natural light to flood the interiors. The imposing double wooden doors, offer a warm, historic welcome, while the stepped gable, adorned with delicate pinnacles, adds vertical elegance and a sense of grandeur.

Authentic details reveal the building’s character throughout: soaring preserved ceilings, original doors and fireplaces remain beautifully intact. Natural materials including marble, aged wood and richly textured fabrics create a sense of quiet elegance, where every corner invites a lingering glance. Bespoke handwoven rugs are paired with linen covered armchairs, while antique writing desks, lamps and vintage mirrors sourced across Belgium reflect light and space.

Guests can stay at 1898 Porter’s House in their Wellness Suite with Family Suite with Terrace, Family Suite Twin Room, and Porter’s Junior Suite. Those who stay at 1898’s Porter House can enjoy cocktails next door at 1898 The Cobbler which is a speakeasy style cocktail bar. Guests and city dwellers will be able to enjoy the vibe of this destination.

Guests can enjoy Breakfast and Afternoon Tea at The Kitchen. There is also a sister hotel 1898 The Post’s for an in-house cafe where you can enjoy baked pastries.

The interiors of 1898 Porter’s House have been thoughtfully designed and refurbished by renowned Belgian interior designer Geraldine Dohogne. Reflecting the brand’s DNA - warm, timeless and artisanal - the design has been developed with deep respect for the building’s heritage, in collaboration with designers, makers and local craftsmen.

As a city, Ghent is filled with canals, medieval towers, cobblestone streets, courtyards, cafés, shops, and galleries - perfect for sight seeing and stepping back into time. Ghent is known as the Manhattan of the Middle Ages. With its old world aesthetic of Medieval churches, you will find vibrant street art, contemporary museums, and a food scene with a number of plantbased restaurants.

1898 PORTER’S HOUSE

Graslei 16, 9000

Ghent, Belgium

1898thepost.com

IG @1898ghent

PHOTOS | 1898 Porter’s House

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see ATHLEISURE LIST | 1898 The Post + Porter’s House in mag.

9LIST ROUTIN3S | JOSHUA JACKSON

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see 9LIST ROUTIN3S | Joshua Jackson in mag.

9PLAYLIST | THE ARTEMIS II CREW WAKEUP PLAYLIST

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see 9PLAYLIST | THE ARTEMIS II CREW Wakeup Playlist in mag.

9PLAYLIST | THE ARTEMIS II CREW MOON PLAYLIST

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see 9PLAYLIST | THE ARTEMIS II CREW Moin Playlist in mag.

THE 9LIST 9M3NU

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see THE 9LIST 9M3NU in mag.

9LIST STORI3S | JUNE AMBROSE

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see 9LIST STORI3S | June Ambrose in mag.

THE 9LIST

Read the APR ISSU #124 of Athleisure Mag and see THE 9LIST in mag.

9LOOKS | BAE X ADIDAS BALTIC

Read the APR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see 9LOOKS | BAE X ADIDAS BALTIC in mag,

ROCK THIS WHEN ATTENDING GALAS, LAUNCHES, + GALLERIES

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see ROCK THIS WHEN ATTENDING GALAS, LAUNCHES, + GALLERIES in mag.

THE PICK ME UP

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see THE PICK ME UP in mag.

IN OUR BAG | OPENING UP FOR THE SEASON

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see IN OUR BAG | Opening Up For the Season in mag.

HOW TO DRESS | WHEN LEAVING THE STUDIO

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see HOW TO DRESS | When Leaving the Studio in mag.

ATHLEISURE BEAUTY

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see ATHLEISURE BEAUTY in mag.

#TRIBEGOALS

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag and see #TRIBEGOALS in mag.

CHOCOLATE BEAUTY

Read the MAY ISSUE #125 of Athleisure Mag and see CHOCOLATE BEAUTY in mag.

ATHLEISURE MAG #124 | CHEF AYESHA NURDJAJA

In this month’s issue, our front and back cover story is with Chef/Partner of Shuka and Shukette, James Beard Award Finalist Best Chef NY State, Titan on S4 and the upcoming S5 of Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat, Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja. We talk with her about how she got into the industry, her passion for her cuisine, why she loves appearing on TV shows and food festivals, Bobby's Triple Threat, and her upcoming cook, Mediterranean All the Way which you can pre-order now.

On April 16th, we attended the Youth America Grand Prix for their 2026 Stars of Today, Meet the Stars of Tomorrow Gala which brought the best ballet talent together from those that are rising stars to those we enjoy seeing on the stage. This year, Misty Copeland hosted and there were a number of people honored at this event, performances, and an auction for designer pointe shoes. 

We sat down with Creative Director, and Costume Designer, June Ambrose who is known for creating iconic looks for Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, and so much more. We talk about her love for creating dynamic looks, her favorite projects, and her latest capsule collection for June Ambrose X Naturalizer.

Who doesn't enjoy a Staycation? During the month of April, we made our way to Muse New York to enjoy a few days during the week in our suite that had a private balcony, spacious spaces, luxurious amenities, and is centrally located to a number of places in Times Square/Theater District and Rockefeller Center.

Football season isn't too far away! We caught up with NFL Super Bowl Champ Wide Receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs, JuJu Smith-Schuster to talk about the game, looking forward to the upcoming season, his upcoming nuptials and his grooming routine. 

We took some time to catch up with singer/songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Rock & Roll Hall of Famer icon and successful entrepreneur, Sammy Hagar to talk about his career, his passion for music and how he got into the industry, wellness, and why he wanted to launch his own supplements in partnership with Wayne Gorsek's Nature Labs.

We had the pleasure of talking with Founder, Dr. Kate Ackerman of Women's Health and Sports Performance Institute to talk about why this institute exists, projects they are involved in and why this is beneficial for women who are professional/semi-professionals, and beyond.

During the month of April, we had another successful Athleisure Mag Summit Series which was hosted at NRTHRN Strong, a modality that is based in cross-country skiing that is a great low-impact total body workout. We sat down with its Founder, Nicoline Roth to talk about how she came to the industry, why she wanted to create this fitness method, walked us through her Flatiron location as well as the flagship in Coppenhagen, and what we can expect in the coming months.

Knowing more about where you come from and tracking down your family roots can be quite a task! We sat down with Ancestry.com's Sr. Story Producer, Nicka Sewell-Smith to find out how we can take the stories that we know, the records that we collection, and keeping an open mind to be the family historian!

This month, our tastebuds were satisfied with a number of meals such as a recent trip to Tokyo Record Bar where we enjoyed a 7-course Omakase menu in their Jewel Box while listening to vinyl from their superb audiophile setup that guests selected prior to the meal. We talk about the restaurant, its dishes, and more.

We attended the launch of Prince Street Pizza X Sergio Tacchini launch where in addition to trying a number of slices, we were able to enjoy a series of performances by Gashi while enjoying a cool Spring night in their courtyard. 

In addition, we enjoyed epic French Dips at Salt Hank's where we spent some time with Chef Daniel Rubenfeld as we enjoyed cheese pulls, satisfying sandwiches, and an all around great vibe.

We also had a phenomenal dinner at Ginger Ristoranti which has locations in Rome and launched its first US eatery here in NYC near Rockefeller Center. They bring nourishing and satisfying Italian dishes along with a focus on wellness that is incorporated into their meals and smoothies/juices. We enjoyed a number of dishes along with inventive cocktails. 

This month's The Art of the Snack takes us to DC and Maryland with 2FIFTY Texas BBQ which is known for their Texas style focus of sauce and grilling meats.

This month's Athleisure List comes from 1898 The Post + Porter’s House, a boutique hotel in Belgium and F1 Arcade in Las Vegas! 

Our 9LIST STORI3S comes from June Ambrose where she shares her must-haves in beauty, style, and fitness. Our 9PLAYLIST comes from what the crew of Artemis II listened to while in space! Our 9LIST ROUTIN3S comes from Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, Dr. Death, and The Affair) to share what he enjoys, does, or has Morning, Afternoon, and Night. Our THE 9LIST 9M3NU comes from Chef Gabriel Lucca of Ginger Ristoranti, Chef/Pitmaster, and Founder Fernando Gonzalez of 2FIFTY Texas BBQ, and Tokyo Record Bar's Chef Ignacia Valdes.

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag.

SURFING THE DREAM | CAROLINE MARKS

The World Surf League’s Tour kicks off the season on Apr 1st for the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach and we can’t wait to see some phenomenal surfing. One of the competitors that we will have our eye on is Caroline Marks WSL Champion for 2023, Olympic Gold Medalist from Paris 2024 and is currently ranked World #2 for the 2025 season.

We wanted to know more about her love for surfing, how she came to it, and how she stays in shape when she is hitting those barrels! We also wanted to know more about her soon to be released Red Bull film, Now Days, her brand Pro Balance Brands, and her recent ambassadorship with Lexus!

ATHLEISURE MAG: It’s so great to connect with you!

CAROLINE MARKS: Hello! I’m currently over in Australia. I’m starting my season, actually the first day of the waiting period is tomorrow!

AM: It’s great to have you as this month’s cover!

CM: I’m really excited. You’ve had a couple people I know on the cover, so that’s pretty cool. I just surfed this morning, now I am talking with you, and then I will be back out surfing!

AM: We assumed!

What is your first memory of surfing and when did you fall in love with it?

CM: My first memory is pretty funny, because there’s actually a photo of it. I was in Costa Rica with my dad and I was on the front of his longboard. I was super young, maybe 3 years old. Then there’s another photo of me and I’m literally standing parallel and my borther’s like in the ackground and he’s kind of making that, “oh my gosh face.” I have a little bow in my hair and it’s pretty cute. I remember falling in love with it. It’s pretty funny because I surfed when I was little and then I actually got into horseback riding while growing up. I loved animals and stuff so I actually wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger and then started barrel racing competitively, and did that until I was 10 and then didn’t really surf much then.

My oldest brother Luke was a competitive surfer so I kind of just thought surfing was his thing and I just kind of let him do his thing and I rode horses, and then I pretty much just wanted to impress my brothers really bad, and that’s why I started surfing. Then I remember when I was 11 years old, I was at the U12s Girls. There’s this event called USA Championships at Lower Trestles and it’s the biggest amateur event as a kid. All the best kids from Hawaii, all the east coast kids, and all the west coast kids come out and compete at Lowers and I ended up entering the event just because my brother was in it and I ended up winning. I was like, “whoa, I must be all right at this!” I just remember getting this big trophy and surfing all day and just having so much fun. I couldn’t believe this is a thing you can do you know? So, I remember from that moment forward, that I want to do this. This is so fun. So that’s where I really was like, I want to be a professional surfer. Wherever it takes me, I’m having so much fun.

AM: Not to say that there is, but is there a similarity or some kind of crossover between barrel racing and surfing for you?

CM: I mean, yeah, if you think about it, I was actually talking about this the other day in an interview, which is funny. I never thought of it like this, but you are on something that’s very out of your control. The ocean’s very, very out of your control. You’re on an animal and you don’t really know what it’s going to do. You can try to control it, but you really can’t. You know, they have a mind of their own.

I guess trying to go fast, like in surfing, going fast is a good thing. It’s like riding horses, that’s kind of like an art. And so certainly, you’re swerving around the barrels and in surfing, you’re riding the waves. I guess there is a little bit of crossover, more than I realized. So it’s pretty funny.

I’ve got some funny photos when I was like little. It was pretty classic.

AM: Obviously surfing on its own is a great sport, you know, for the total body to stay in shape. But what are work3outs that you do to optimize yourself in the sport?

CM: I love Pilates! Core and surfing is really important. I do a lot of lower leg work in surfing. Definitely having strong legs is really important because obviously you’re on the board a lot. I also love swimming because it’s just really good for your paddling and really good for your lungs and breathing and stuff. So those 3 things I do as well as cycle in between. Biking and swimming are kind of the things that I go back and forth between, but I mostly do Pilates and then just typical stuff in the gym with my trainers.

AM: What is your favorite maneuver when you’re surfing?

CM: This isn’t really a maneuver, but getting barreled is probably the ultimate feeling as a surfer!

AM: Oh wow!

CM: Oh yeah! You’re obviously in the tunnel of the waves.

AM: It looks so beautiful, but it looks so scary at the same time!

CM: Oh yeah, it is a bit of both for sure, but definitely getting barreled is something that’s just such an amazing feeling and then just doing a big frontside carve obviously just like laying into a big turn that always feels really good going really fast and just like laying into it. So those two things I like!

AM: You are a 2X Olympian who won a Gold medal in Paris. What has that meant to you to surf on such a global stage – you have had many stages, but what does it mean to do it for the Olympics?

CM: The Olympics, it doesn’t really get any bigger than that you know? It’s obviously a very global thing. It’s one of the only things that brings the whole world together. Not everyone knows about surfing, but everyone knows about the Olympics.

AM: Right.

CM: I was really proud to represent my country on that big of a stage and obviously to win. I mean, it’s just so incredible. It’s definitely the proudest moment in my career. I mean, it’s obviously about the world title. It’s hard to say one win for a WSL Championship versus the Olympics as both were the biggest dreams of mine as a little girl and the fact that I did both of them at 22 is pretty crazy! I am super grateful. It was amazing and it’s pretty hard to describe the feeling of being able to represent your country, but I’m really proud.

AM: Are you thinking about LA28?

CM: Of course! I want to be in as many Olympics as possible, but obviously, you know, LA28, it’s at a wave that’s like Lower Trestles. It’s 5 minutes from my house and obviously to be the hosting nation is just extra motivation because, it’s at home, which is pretty incredible. So I’m definitely thinking about it for sure.

AM: We can see you there! Anytime we’ve seen you surf, we can see you’re in your element and are just happy to be one with the water, it’s all zen and then we see you owning that barrel!

CM: Surfing has brought me everything really - a lot of the best moments of my life. I’ve met some of my best friends through surfing. The ocean is such a healing place for me, which is pretty cool to be able to say that about my job.

AM: Yeah.

CM: My career is - I just go in the ocean. Your day is instantly better, which is pretty amazing.

AM: You just mentioned at the top that the World Surf League Championship Tour kicks off its 50th season starting tomorrow for the first on-call day in Australia for the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach at Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia from Apr 1 – Apr 11th. What are you looking forward to as it kicks off?

CM: Yeah. I mean, first off, we’ve had our longest off-season of our career.

AM: Yeah.

CM: Just with them changing it around the schedule. It used to be - well way back, before it was my first couple years on tour it was April - December and then they switched it to January – September. It’s been that way for 5 years and now it’s back to April so in order for them to do that, we ended up having a 7 month long off season which for us, that’s a very long time. So usually our off season is pretty short compared to other sports. I think everyone’s just very excited because you haven’t really seen us in jerseys in a while! We also have some of the goats coming back like Carissa Moore and Stephanie Gilmore, which is amazing and they also extended the Women’s Tour, so there’s a lot of like milestones that have been broken this year already! I think everyone’s just really excited to see what happens. I have no doubt it’s just going to be a firework of a year. So I’m pretty excited.

AM: What’s your favorite one on the WSL Tour?

CM: Well, that’s a hard one. I know.

AM: We ask the tough questions!

CM: It’s a hard one. I mean, Cloudbreak’s pretty incredible. It’s such an incredible wave. Jeffreys Bay, which actually is not on tour this year, but it’s in South Africa, that’s another iconic one. Tahiti, obviously, just from winning the Gold there. I just have a lot of great memories there. And then Lower Trestles, of course. Lowers and Tahiti are probably my favorites, just with Lowers being in my backyard. It’s just such a fun wave. But it’s hard because everywhere has such beautiful things about it. But I’d say Lowers is probably my favorite wave on tour.

AM: Clearly you travel around the world to different places quite frequently. Are there 3 items that you tend to take with you to make any city or stop kind of feel like home?

CM: I mean, definitely. I’m not really one to bring a pillow. We just have so much stuff. We have our board bag, all of our clothes, and stuff like that. But I think just like a shirt from home, something I sleep in at home, just bringing it on the road. It’s the little things like that which kind of make me feel more at home or your favorite coffee cup or whatever things just make you feel more homey. But I feel like I’ve gotten so used to traveling that I’m able to adapt to it pretty quickly. I do travel with an eye mask. That’s something I do travel with to sleep on the planes with. That’s important. But nothing too crazy. Actually, this year my sister-in-law packed me a good luck charm in my bag so I just leave it in my luggage and it goes everywhere I go which is pretty cool!

AM: You definitely know it’s always there because it’s just in the luggage waiting to go.

CM: Exactly! i just leave it in there and it’s a little good luck charm which is kind of cool. I’m not too much of a creature of habit in that sense. I kind of just go with the flow.

AM: We had the pleasure of watching the screener for Now Days right before chatting with you. This is such a great film and so enjoyable to watch. It’s shot beautifully and it’s really great to see the 6 of you being able to navigate the waves and to tell your story. You recently had an event for this here in NY even though the film debuts in May. Why did you love being part of this film and what can you tell us about this?

CM: Thank you so much. I’m stoked you got to watch it. First off, there hasn’t been an all female surf film since 2011 and that was Leave a Message. That film left such an impact on me and I know it has for many other girls. It was so cool to see that. As much as it sounds simple to do, an all-female star film, it’s so difficult to get everyone together. We all have crazy schedules from different countries. We’re also each other’s biggest rivals.

AM: Right.

CM: That’s another thing that’s pretty funny, but I’m just really proud of it. I think, you know, obviously hopefully it inspires the next generation. And I feel like... that’s kind of our job in this generation is to inspire the next one and to push this forward and grow this forward and that’s what the generations did before us! That’s why we have equal pay. The girls in this film and this generation, I feel like we just had very good timing. All the girls before us that fought for this and for us and so now this film hopefully inspires the next generation to go harder and to push more. I’m really confident in that and I’m just really proud of it you know? It’s like two and a half years in the making coming to Red Bull and anything they put their hands on is pretty special. I knew the surfing was going to be amazing, but I also love how it tells a story of “hey, we all obviously want to win.

Surfing is a very cutthroat individual sport, but we also like pushing each other in a healthy environment and we are all good friends.” You know, I see these girls more than my family most of the year.

AM: Yeah.

CM: I’m with them so much. So, it really shows that. And we’re all able to relate to each other in a way that we probably won’t with our other friends, because we live this exact same life. So, yeah, I’m super proud of it and I just hope that the young girls, young guys, whoever watches it is just really inspired and wants to go surfing. It’s pretty cool to see the fruits of the labor because it definitely was a lot of work, but it was worth it!

AM: 100%! One of the things we like most about Red Bull films is when they have a number of individuals within the same sport, like Mark McMorris who was our cover this past December, he had just debuted PAVED.

CM: Yeah.

AM: It’s incredible to see people in a sport, but to see the individuality as well as the things that bind them together, it’s just so cool. We don’t surf; however, living in NY we love the surfing culture in Rockaway and Long Beach. It’s so cool to see how surfers show drive, grace, and flow which is what is evident in this film. People are going to enjoy it once it premieres.

CM: Thanks so much! I hope so. There’s definitely been even for this event, there’s been a lot of people asking about it, which has been really cool to see the hype around it. You know, it was something that was out of my comfort zone. Like I’ve always been so just hyper focused on competing and winning. That’s really what it takes in order to win. So this was cool because it was something that was new to me and different. I’ve never done a film like this before. So I was really proud of that.

AM: Well, you also just became a surf ambassador for Lexus, which is awesome. Why are you excited about this partnership? And why did you feel it was synergistic to your brand?

CM: Yeah, I mean, first off, Lexus makes such cool cars. And one of my friends, Griffin Colapinto, he got signed a year prior to me.

AM: Another cover of ours.

CM: Yeah! So I think just seeing the car and seeing how it fits my lifestyle, it’s a great combination between, sporty and luxury - I really like that. I like how they celebrate that. Also just getting to know everyone behind Lexus, everyone’s really cool. It’s a very family-oriented vibe, and I come from a big family, so I really love that. And so... I feel like it was a great partnership. I got one here in Australia with me and everyone’s like, nice car, nice wheels. I’m getting all the compliments on it.

AM: Wow.

CM: It’s pretty cool. I got to roll to the first event in style, it looks so cool.

AM: We have a Lexus SUV which is great because sometimes for the magazine between photography gear, styling items, transporting the team to shoots or even doing an event with goodie bags, you need to be able to carry everything – it needs to be fashionable, but you want to be able to get to where you have to go with everything in one piece.

CM: Absolutely. I feel like it fits all my boards. It fits wetsuits, everything I need. And also like it’s comfortable and it’s safe and it’s sturdy. And I also just love it aesthetically. I love and have the GX 550. I love the way it looks. So that’s also a bonus. I’m proud to drive the car. So yeah, it’s awesome.

AM: Well, what does the partnership look like in terms of what can we expect to see you doing with them and with the car? What will that look like from a consumer side?

CM: So Griffin and I, we’re going to do some collab videos here. We’re both in Australia, which will be pretty fun. So there’s a lot of beautiful beaches here, a lot of great scenery. So stay tuned for a cool video with that. And obviously, you know, I’m going to be traveling a lot this year. But wherever they provide me a car, we’re going to be providing content. Lexus sponsors the U.S. Open, so I look forward to seeing what they have in store for this year’s event. I think I’m doing a signing with them. We have great things coming up. And yeah, I’m really excited about it.

AM: Clearly you’re a business person as an athlete and someone who has a number of sponsors, and you have added to your portfolio by creating your own brand, Pro Balance Bands. Tell us about this and why did you want to launch it?

CM: Thanks for asking. It’s cool. My dad, he’s very business-minded. He comes from that background. He taught me a lot about that side of the world, which is really cool. I really trust his opinion. I think after the Gold medal, we kind of thought, how do we capitalize on this? The bands felt so natural to me and and my main thing was, I travel a lot and I don’t want to put a product out that I can’t travel with because most of my life is on the road, So the bands feels so perfect. I’ve also been training with them since I started working out way more consistently in 2019, my second year on tour and that was the year I made the first Olympics. I just use bands everywhere and I bring them everywhere I go. They come in like a little pouch. It’s great and you can do a lot with bands so it felt so natural and it’s been really fun.

It’s my first time starting a company and obviously I have a lot of help doing it, but, it’s been really cool and all the bands are really good material. I use them every single day. So it’s great. You’ll see me if you watch the webcast warming up with them. So I’m really proud of it and it’s been going good so far. I think we’re going to come out with some new products as well.

AM: Nice.

CM: We started with the bands, but we’re going to keep adding more things in. We also have weekly videos of myself, my brother, our other ambassadors doing videos as well. My trainer too, he does videos, which is cool. So if you want to know how I train, you just go on the website Pro Balance Bands or on our YouTube. It’s exciting and I’m enjoying it. It’s been fun.

AM: Well, when you’re not on tour or shooting campaigns or doing all these different things, how do you take time for yourself just to have a moment to yourself?

CM: Honestly, I’m a pretty simple girl. I love just being with my friends whether it’s as simple as, you know, going to get a coffee or going out for dinner or watching the sunset. Things like that bring me a lot of joy. I think just kind of being in one place and being with good people - I call it my “feel good people.” When you’re around people you really know, there’s no effort.

AM: Exactly.

CM: You end up leaving hanging out with them with more in your battery - it becomes more full. It’s how I recharge. And I also do love my own alone time as well. I just love whether that’s just sitting on my couch at home or just going for a drive, that’s also really therapeutic to me as well or going on a beach walk or whatever. Things like that sound really silly, but that’s kind of how, what helps me unwind and I love that.

AM: Being that you’re in that next generation of surfers, you’re trailblazing, you’ve gotten all these different awards and accolades. What do you want your legacy to be seen as in this sport or even in life?

CM: I mean, I just really want girls and people in general to be inspired. I love surfing. It’s really fun to me and I hope I kind of give off that persona. I just want to leave a legacy of being hardworking, but also enjoying your life too. You know, it can’t always just be like work, work, work like this. We live such an amazing life and we should enjoy it. And there’s more to it than surfing too. We’re in these different countries. We’re in different cultures. It’s really cool. Obviously surfing is what brought me here. But there’s so much more than that. And I think hopefully I can leave a legacy of just a really positive outlook on life, surfing, and fun. I hope that makes sense.

AM: It does. We always think about that when you’re doing stuff, especially now that obviously we live in an age where people can see stuff socially, you’re touching corners of the world that someone who grew up that isn’t living your life or experiences personally, they can envision that for themselves. Maybe if it’s not that same thing, but something similar and it just creates a spark and wonder. So that’s really cool.

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | FRONT COVER. PG 16 ,PD 24, PG 26 Ed Sloane/World Surf League | PG 19 Tony Heff/World Surf League | PG 20, PG 29 Brent Bielmann/World Surf League | PG 22 ROXY | PG 30 Ryan Miller/Red Bull Content Pool | PG 33 USA Surfing | PG 34 Domenic Mosqueira/Red Bull Content Pool | PG 36 Nathan Adams/ Red Bull Content Pool | PG 38 Marcelo Marafni | BACK COVER CHAMPION |

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see SURFING THE DREAM | Caroline Marks in mag.

MAESTRO OF MAGIC | DEBORAH CZERESKO

We spent an afternoon with Deborah Czeresko at Brooklyn Glass making three of her acclaimed and well-sought after Forgotten Potatoes with her, and her assistant Em. An acclaimed NYC-based artist and designer, Deborah is best known for her work with glass. She won the inaugural season of Netflix’s Blown Away glass competition show in 2019, where contestants compete in glassblowing challenges for prizes and the title of champion. Her work challenges societal norms with elegant, sophisticated and often whimsical themes rooted in gender and feminism. Her work has been shown in Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

We love how she is such a deep thinker and super creative in speaking is art and metaphor. An extremely thoughtful and determined creative, we were honored to spend working time together to truly embrace the elegant fierce fragility that glass blowing presents at this top level. It was truly exciting to see her in action and hear her stories about past, present and future projects.

We first met her and her lovely partner, Three, on the eve of our January Cover drop, where we enjoyed Diageo’s legendary Burn’s Supper Night in NYC together, complete with Haggis, Poetry & Song, Bagpipes, and a medley of favorite Scottish Whiskey’s Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Oban Single Malt, Buchanan’s Blended Scotch Whiskey, and more.

ATHLEISURE MAG: You said glass was your first love, what were those first moments for you?

DEBORAH CZERESKO: It felt like a real true love. Like when you just are instantly attracted to something. It’s sort of fourth dimensional on some undefinable plane what you’re feeling, this kind of attraction, because it combines all the things you don’t know about yourself necessarily at that time. Like when I was younger and why was this material for me? It seemed kind of mystical and magical [and] what I didn’t know is the intelligence that I had in connecting to it in a physical way and in a conceptual way. I mean, now I can intellectualize it, but then I was just instinct-driven.

AM: And you knew it off the bat or within, say the first month - or looking back now, you’re saying that?

DC: Oh no. The moment I saw the glass, hot glass, I knew this was for me. So, first of all, you’re sculpting a fluid. That’s not like sculpting any other material. The stuff is flowing… [i]t’s a weird way to think that you’re actually sculpting a liquid. It’s the weirdness of how you sculpt this and the weirdness of the material itself. The material seems otherworldly when it’s hot, so it’s like lava. I was really attracted to the fact that this stuff seems so atypical and not stereotypical as a medium, really. So it definitely feels magical.

AM: So what does glass allow you to say that other materials wouldn’t let you do?

DC: Well, I touched on the fluidity, and also it’s transparency. So that’s something you can’t find in that many materials. So anything having to do with transparency and fluidity and this moving from different states in this particular way, in the middle of kind of a binary - it’s not soft and it’s not hard - it’s a fluid. So it’s constantly moving and even in its perceived state, when it’s cold it’s called a super cooled liquid, so I think you can say anything with glass they can say with any other material, but with glass I think the fluidity, and it inherently brings fragility on one side and then fierceness on the other.

And then at some point it becomes permanent. So when you’re working on it you’re able to go from A to B, and then a number of stops, and then you’re in control and you’re changing things. But at some point you lose control, right? At some point it’s beyond adapting, like after placing it in the annealer. The minute it’s in the annealer, you can’t then take the glasswork and put it back in the fire and remold it again right, so at some point you lose control.

I would say if we were having a dialogue with this material, it’s more like speaking this material’s language. It’s not going to speak our language, it’s not human, and when you can’t be receptive enough to learn about this material as it is [ultimately] going to take control. It’s going to dominate as dominant material, and that’s one thing about it in its property. It doesn’t look that way, it’s so demure in a way when you just look at a glass thing like a huge hunk of 100 pound glass could look like an enormous ghost, but it’s this massive thing that has these strengths you can’t even see and it’s just demanding that you sort it in a soft way to to be at one with it, rather than collaborate withn it.

AM: So how do you approach a project? What are some of the steps you take initially? Generally what do major project timelines look like?

DC: For my own artwork project or one initiated by a prompt of some sort, like as in the case of the large piece I did for the public school called “Everybody’s Gotta Eat,” in that case, I was told where the piece would be going. So it’s going to a public school for grades 1-6 outside of the school cafeteria. And so, the other criterion was to be significant and relevant for 100 years, and immediately that’s very intimidating. How could anything I say or do be relevant for 100 years, when the world is changing so rapidly at this point? I don’t know what demographic of person is going to be there, or even if the school is going to be a public school for that long. Let’s assume it is, so then I have to fit within those boundaries, but that’s a pretty open criteria. So I start thinking about the dialogue and the vernacular. I’ve started to create with my own work and how that can fit into that parameter. In that case, I submitted an initial idea and was asked to modify that idea because they really wanted the idea to be primarily glass. I submitted an idea that had a lot of metal in it because the project was so large and had to take up so much space. And glass is rather expensive, well so is metal, but I tried to occupy the space in other ways than just glass objects. So I started to think in terms of those limitations, and also financial in that situation. So that’s a commissioned piece.

Now, in the case of my own imagination, without any limits, I’m thinking about what I’m going to make all the time. I never am not thinking about those ideas and how what I want to put forward conceptually can be connected to some kind of form. And in recent years, I’ve been doing realistic forms, like eggs, for example, I’ve become synonymous with the egg. What kind of symbolism does that have? Is it enough to just put that egg out there? Do I have to do some kind of action to the egg? And so, as I’m going through the world, that’s how I get my creative ideas. That’s when I’m in the most, I think, creative mindset. I’m just influenced by New York. I’m in New York. It’s so beautiful and filled with art, like we walk down the street and we see graffiti and we see shoppers putting their potato chips in designer ways in their windows and entire shops making beautiful installations with their tires and hubcaps. I just feel like that’s part of me too, like my how I live in New York as that’s my world. So I try to do the similar things with the glass, like as if I were a storefront in New York with food. I try to tell my story here or what I think is relevant. I’m more like a miner. I’m mining for things constantly around me.

So you kind of have that page open, and it’s kind of like a piece of your personality where you’re thinking of ways for storytelling and expression that can always happen through this medium.

It just feels good so like being in that zone, I mean when I really connect, I really feel like I have an idea that is meaningful and just running on all cylinders, that’s when I feel the best, honestly.

AM: Oh, that’s cool. How often would you say that has happened?

DC: I don’t know. That’s more rare. It’s like to really nail it. I think the piece that would be the most iconic piece for me would be the Meat Chandelier that’s in the Corning Museum of Glass. I feel like I nailed it there. Sometimes that gets in the way of finishing a piece though, because once I already feel like I did it, then the assemblage becomes the hardest part, because then the most fun part of thinking I nailed it is over. So now it’s an aesthetic and a construction problem, rather than a conceptual problem. And that’s a different energy process. And it’s more like vacuuming. You have to make sure we’re cleaning the dishes. You have to make sure how to build something. It’s a different kind of energy than creative energy, I think with the installations because there’s a lot of other problems to solve, which aren’t right. The fun icing on the cake part.

AM: So what part would you say is the most fun? Is it thinking of it, making it, or having it up where people can enjoy it?

DC: I think on both ends of the spectrum here, like having it up and having people enjoy it is really satisfying to know that it’s done. And if I get to the point where I’ve actually thought of something, I think I like to have nailed it. That’s the most satisfying. The making part, it’s not as satisfying as those two things, honestly.

AM: Let’s talk about making it. So there, I was with you and your assistant Em making three Forgotten Potatoes at Brooklyn Glass, and there’s a lot to it in setting it up, making it, and constantly working and re-working it. There’s a lot of physical movement. So do you stretch before you start and do you work out certain areas to be more inclined to doing that? Tell me about the athleticism behind it, and also you started out wanting to be an athlete?

DC: I think that was one of the things that clicked for me in being attracted to glass. I wanted to be in a physical medium and I wanted to be in a creative medium. I wanted to express myself through my body, but not as a dancer. So, because that is something that was very intimidating to me, like rhythm and dancing, but I knew I was very physical. What material is going to incorporate that aspect of me is something I was asking without asking. I would say I wasn’t as conscious of it as I am now, but it’s obvious now why I was really attracted to this material. So challenging! It’s just like a feeling that you can’t get anywhere else really to work with glass in a variety of ways.

So [about] the athleticism, I was in high school sports and college sports, and it’s interesting to have an equal part athleticism and creativity with what you are going to do with that and how it is going to manifest. What is that going to make you in your life, and so I guess I found it by mistake. So I do prep and I make sure my body is in condition to work. So I work out in a gym doing strength training. Strength training is the best thing for prepping for this type of activity. I mean, glass can be easy physically, but it depends what you’re really going for here. If you’re doing a large production and making a thousand pieces in a day, that’s going to be physical in one way, versus a really large piece that weighs like 50 pounds. It’s going to be physical in a different way. Or you could just be a hobbyist and just make one thing a day and not really need to prep your body at all. But I don’t work every day. So I don’t want to go in there after not working and not be conditioned or ready to go. So it involves a lot, especially in the heat.

AM: So what gym do you workout in?

DC: I just recently moved to Crunch South Slope. It’s in Brooklyn, two blocks from the studio I’ve been training with a friend of mine, one of my people I work with to make glass. His name’s Alex Kruger. He’s a trainer at Crunch. It’s really cool because how often you get a trainer that’s also a glassblower, so it’s a pretty special situation right - he knows exactly what touch points help you and how I can do the workout and still be functional the next day. We’re doing a lot of higher reps.

AM: What kind of music do you listen to in the studio? Today we heard a lot of Buena Vista Social Club, which we absolutely love! So I was very happy. So what kind of music?

DC: I do like dance disco. I like Purple Disco Machine. They’re good. Groovy. Anything that goes well in hot weather actually does work well in the hot shop. Something with good vibes, something just open. Having good music, I think, is important doing art. I’m also influenced by my studio mate who’s over there. He’s Colombian, and so he does a lot of Latin beats and I like Celia Cruz, that came with that. I think it’s just such a lovely rhythm to work in glass with like and some people come in and try to play things like heavy metal and what not, but it doesn’t really go. It makes the time pass much slower, when you don’t have a good rhythm going.

AM: So what are some of the works you would say you’re most well known for?

DC: I would say there’s three. The one that sort of put me on the map, I think, as an artist was the Meat Chandelier, which is in the Corning Museum Collection. And that started my dialogue with using food and consumables and everyday objects as kind of a vernacular that I talk in with these objects. And that one was specifically sort of a critique of the hot shop that we work in and the patriarchy in general, and this patriarchal world of trying to enter in as somebody other than someone of the patriarchy. So it was a play [on that]. I always like to put a little humor in my work. So I see both sides of this coin on this. Like so many people have helped me of all genders, and so many people have hated me of all genders. So I’m kind of in the middle, but it’s a place where physicality matters and typically people working larger pieces are guys, so it by it’s very nature and we’re talking here specifically, about sculpting glass, not in factories and production in those situations, it’s almost all men.

So, like when I went to Italy, there are no women working on the pipe. By pipe, I mean blowpipe. There’s maybe an assistant helping somebody, but that is really still separated as far as genders go and glass making, outside of the studio glass movement of America and other countries. So this is an art scene, which is different, but it still has that aspect to it. Who gets the jobs? It tends to be the guys, whatever. It’s better in my world because I’m an artist and it’s an art world, but I’m also speaking about the world in general in my work. So that is real.

AM: So what are a couple of the other pieces you would say you’re most well-known for?

DC: Another piece would be the piece I just recently finished last year, which was “Everybody’s Got To Eat,” that is in the public school. It’s one of my bigger works. And I feel like it was sort of a sweet and delicate piece in a way where it’s made for children, and also in a way it’s made for everybody because more than just children go through a public school. People love to eat, as do I, [but] maybe not at the school cafeteria, but it’s 24 fruits and vegetables from around the world representing different worldly cultures. There was a limit and how many I could make due to the financial scope of the project, but I tried to get different regions of the world represented through their fruits and vegetables, including things like New York, an apple, and that represents school and an apple. Then there’s things like an avocado, which represents South America, but also hipsterdom. So these vegetables and fruits have dual meanings sometimes, and who can see themselves in there because they gave another task requirement of being relevant for a hundred years. I mean, it’s a tough one.

AM: I see it. I’m looking at it online now. Wow.. That’s beautiful.

DC: And then it’s really kind of touching to see - you can tell they’re handmade and supposed to be inspiring to people to see that you can make these things with your own two hands in the world of AI and Technology, and have these handmade things in front of students. I think it’s really meaningful to connect them to the planet in some way, in their own bodies. So all that’s in there. And make them feel special that it’s there for them, right?

AM: So it seems like there’s a realistic meets artistic formula that I’m looking at through this project where there’s some surrealism, right? But then some practical vision of what it would look like. And you’re balancing that in the piece.

DC: Yeah, I think that this idea of creating a vernacular is really important to me as an artist - like what is this piece and who are you just putting a dragon fruit out there?

AM: I like that one! Looks very challenging, with all the green around it. Now that I got to see all the intensity it took for the sprouts of the Forgotten Potatoes. Wow, I really like the corn too.

DC: Yeah, that was another challenging one. See, this is a public school project, so the budget wasn’t huge, but it was a decent budget. But I really needed four or five people per piece. That’s a 50-pound corn, and I had a team of three. So for glass, that’s a reasonable-sized team. But for that piece, each corn kernel was brought in a wrap. So one person had to bring all those wraps, whereas I formed all the reps. So we divide into teams, where one person’s bringing the wraps; one person’s on the main blow pipe reheating keeping the piece hot doing all the forming; so if we had another person at least, that would have been helpful. But it really wasn’t in the cards for that project.

AM: See, it’s good you said it was 50 pounds because from looking at the image hung up, I don’t know if it gives the sense someone would know.

DC: Well, to get the texture of getting the corn kernels… I have to solve some technical problems about how I’m going to get all those kernels on there without applying each one individually. So we put on glass wraps that are vertical wraps that are rolled in powder color I divide out with a tool. I then crimp the kernels into it and it creates a personal style I think you can identify that piece kind of as something I made because I choose to work in this style and this level of detail a lot. I could spend the entire day putting every kernel on individually, but I do not need to do I so. One of the maestros I studied with would do that. His demos were excruciatingly long. His name was Pino Signoretto. He was my most influential maestro that I studied with. And he’s so detail-oriented and could work on all different scales. I think he was just an amazing, like, approaching God of Glass, honestly. He could make things other people couldn’t make at the furnace, that is.

AM: So to get the corn, for example, looking that way, did you study corn for a while to look at kernels? And how long would you do that for? Or is this something you would look at really quickly and then put your spin on it?

DC: Oh, I pull up images of corn. I mean, they’re all over my desktop. Like when I’m making a corn, I print them out. I bring in corn to work from. I eat a lot of corn. I just want to know about corn. You live your work. I grew corn in my garden…

AM: So when you see corn now, do you think of corn and that project?

DC: Oh yeah. That’s in my garden. I love corn though. Bi-colored is harder to make as the two colors for each kernel are applied separately.

AM: So tell me about how the Egg series you started. And being in your studio, I saw a whole bunch of Eggs dripping all over. So tell me about the Eggs!

DC: So the Egg pieces, I would say this is the third piece that really defines me as an artist’s third installation. But that happened on TV. That happened on the finale of the Netflix competition show Blown Away. So the prompt there was to make your ultimate art exhibit or something really high there, like something amazing, fantastic, unduplicatable, like just your most amazing piece of art ever! So, with these parameters where we had to fit into that space and you only get so much time to make it, I start to think about some of the pieces I had previously made and what aspects of those concepts I wanted to focus on. So within that, the egg came about because I had the Meat Chandelier in the back of my mind - I knew it couldn’t make a chandelier, but I could use the egg as a metaphor for a female and aspects of what it means to be a female in the world of art into my final finale of the show. This gender inequality, like my feminist side in art, because I’m an artist and a feminist, and I like to make food and glass - so I’m like, how can I make this a meaningful statement? So I started to think of a classic art pedestal, so saying it’s good finally taking over the art world starting to become equal, or the egg not aggressively, but oozing over and in a different way creating a stand in the art world that’s equal to males. Then i also wanted to play on queerness and gender bending and that’s where the frying pan comes in. It’s obviously everything’s glass, but the frying pan is cast iron as very male. But the egg, it was the primary character. Without the egg, there would be no installation.

AM: So what brought you to that show? So you applied or you were asked to join the competition show? What was it like to be on the show and win Blown Away S1 on Netflix?

DC: It was intense to be on it and intense to win it. The structure was where we had to create a new project every three days and it was from a prompt, like creating a floral, or a biological with the human body and moving through space. So they would give us a prompt and then we would have a little bit of time to come up with an answer for that, and we would be in our own hotel rooms doing this. It’s a lot of pressure to have to get on camera the next day and produce. First of all, come up with the idea before you go to bed that night, and then present it the next day in drawings on camera. So it was 10 episodes of forced creativity in a way, but what I learned about myself from that is to actually function really well in that regard when I have a deadline and I have to produce.

AM: Yep. I know what you’re saying. Urgency to Deliver - I’m going to deliver. It’s like a diamond, right? Under pressure, you’re going to produce and maybe not the same every time, but often you’re going to nail it really way and often win!

DC: Yeah. When we first got on there, I had [to look at] space to organize or deal with, like space is a luxury. Time is a luxury and I have it, and I’m like, Oh My God, why am I not more productive when I have all this time to get my Corning residency together? Why am I not doing this in a way that I’ll just get it over with? It lingers. But if you told me tomorrow I’d have to get in there and tell them exactly what to do, I would be up all night figuring it out.

AM: Did you know of anyone else on the show? Were you familiar with any other competitor?

DC: Actually, I only knew one other person, which surprised me.

AM: What was your experience on the show as far as winning? Did your career change after that? What were the effects after being announced the winner?

DC: It was remarkable. Like the effect was kind of like a wave. I got on the top of a wave and it just took me. I wasn’t doing anything. Part of the prize of winning this was that the Corning Museum Store would buy $10,000 worth of my work. But it wasn’t necessarily art. The store sells collectibles. So for the first time in my life, I came up with a line of objects that I could sell. People just kept writing me and asking me. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t make enough posts on Instagram. It was a lot! It was life-changing in that I wasn’t able to consistently sell my work like that beforehand. And it changed the work I did to make a living from that point on. So a lot of the work I did prior to that was fabrication for other artists, which I find that extremely demanding psychologically and physically to do. You put a lot of yourself into other people’s work as opposed to your own work. And it could be draining to you making your own work in multiple ways. And then, I also had a lighting line I did with a rep that was called site-specific art, and we would do custom high-end projects.

The show kind of launched during COVID too, and that was an interesting time to have this launch. Then I got opportunities to show in galleries and asked to do things I think I normally wouldn’t have had as a result. It’s not magic, you win a reality tv program and still have to work really hard and try to control my own life in some way in a direction that I want it to go, but there’s a magic to life, right - and what door is going to open next I don’t necessarily know!

I could do that like the project for Mortlock whiskey through Diageo, that was just out of the blue in designing a whiskey pipette. So the brand was Mortlock, and they specifically have design projects going every year. This was the fifth year. So it’s part of their marketing and bringing people together. They found me and asked me if I could make something for their design line and I’m thinking.. oh a glass or something - sure I’d love to make a glass, but they’re like it’s a pipette, [which is] basically an eyedropper. I can make anything in glass, but you want me to make this tiny thing? So I suggested that they had me make the pipette holder too to hold the water as well as a set. It was inspired by the the stills using copper embedding copper in glass, and in the case of the finished product I rolled the hot glass in copper foil and had a violent reaction under the glass that bubbled and turned blue. When it was hot, the copper looked black, but the finished glass ended up being blue. Yeah, it looked very pretty, very elegant 120 sets.

AM: So one of the things you made on this show were Forgotten Potatoes on one of the episodes.. So tell me about the episode. How did you came up with that? And they’re continuing in your studio and people are excited to order and get them?

DC: So that was a botanical-themed challenge. They came up with that challenge because one of the first things you make in glass when you touch it for the first time ever is this thing called a flower. It teaches you how to use the pincers and pull the glass out and it ends up looking something like a very rudimentary flower. I was like thinking about potatoes that sprout, and I really like them because they represent to me, these like unsung powerhouses. It’s not something that’s typically considered beautiful as a potato, yet here it is being this amazing powerhouse! Like, yeah you got your typical beauty which is a flower with its color and all its proportions, but I see the world in a different way - so many other things that could be beautiful and are beautiful and powerful and to me it represented marginalized people as very super powerful people that get disregarded and overlooked. They were represented in the Forgotten Potato and they are often forgotten or overlooked or pushed down and not allowed to shine, but the potato comes through no matter what!

AM: We made three of those together, which was awesome and I saw that you put a lot of effort into getting the exact hues and colors you wanted for the potato. So what’s involved with trying to recreate something that you created before and trying to stay true to the system, rather than creating a new thing as an artist?

DC: Well, the good thing about potatoes and sprouting, they’re endlessly variable - like consistently fascinating - they’re not boring, so it’s not like making a production line in that everyone’s the same. Each one has a little personality and people relate to them in different ways like and people really do relate to the Forgotten Potato or they relate to the metaphor behind the piece heavily. It really gave me a lot of faith in people in a way.

AM: And the sprouts were super cool. It was noted that the sophistication and quality of the sprouts is similar to fine stemware. So it really gets to show off both some of your superb skills and it also gets to relate to and maybe be something the owner gets to flaunt in a way.

DC: That they’re an art piece and has something as fine as stemware, there’s some people that might look to use it as a conversation piece with their guests. It’s challenging to make when you’re opening that up and trying to get it hot as it’s flopping all over the place in the hot box. The hot box is called what we have for our furnaces, and then reheat the glass in glory holes, many are now calling reheating chambers. A challenging part of it with young glass is timing that is really huge here… so you got to know your glass and and what temperature it’s it’s at because it will self-destruct if it gets too cold, and if it’s cold and then goes back into the glory hole which is super hot, it can shatter! In order to become a maestro at this, you have to make a lot of mistakes and work on a lot of different projects to get really good as a sculptor in glass.

AM: How do you generally decide what to make if you’re selling glass pieces?

DC: It’s not just selling, but having a place to put it, because I don’t have enough space in New York to just make stuff. So we thought about that as if I had a beautiful studio in upstate New York that I could bring my work and work on it, I would be creating worlds. I think worlds with these, I would probably make my garden like that. [Presently] there’s a practicality in that there’s the limit of space, and glass is expensive, and part of it is time making it.

AM: What’s the longest time you spent on a project?

DC: Probably one of the ones we mentioned already.. there was also a show I did a couple years ago with the Hannah Traore Gallery that took a couple years to put together. I’m known for it and it was involving mushrooms and their mycelial network that I made in neon so the mushrooms would communicate with trees which I made also in the galaxy called Creatures of Culture That was very popular recently.

AM: Oh, wow, that’s cool.

DC: So I made a tree out of mirrored mosaic, like how it would look like a disco ball. Then I brought in a thousand pounds of glass soil, which was broken up brown chunks of glass from a defunct factory in West Virginia that I brought into the gallery and put on the floor. That also had a queerdelier, it’s like a chandelier, but a queer chandelier because the mushrooms are like non-binary beings - they’re neither plant nor animal, so they have one foot in each category, because they don’t have photosynthesis they get their nutrients through enzymatic digestion.

AM: So if glass could talk back to you, what do you think it would say?

DC: Stop hurting me. That’s when you’re working it too cold. It feels so painful to the glass. You can see it like hates it. Okay. you’re pushing too hard trying to just get every working second out of the heat you just did, and you just go too far it always scars the glass, and it shows you it just went too far! I think it speaks to me most when it’s hot. So when it’s in this molten state. So once the sand and whatnot is heated together. Then it forms an identity, a personality. Yeah.

AM: What would you say the most absurd commission request you ever received was?

DC: Oh, David Letterman, to make glass soap for him. He wanted to use Christmas gifts. Oh I thought this guy is hilarious, because that’s the gift you give somebody when you don’t know what to give them! So he’s creating this glass soap, like when you don’t know what to give someone, you bring a housewarming gift or something, you get soap and candles as two of the biggest things. He was going to use it as a charming novelty to hand out to people saying, I normally would give you soap, but now I’m giving you elevated glass soap. I thought it was hilarious.

He had me make other things too. A tie. OK, then there’s the tie which he still had hanging over there from his son’s prep school tie when he was graduating. So he had me make that - then the tie broke - the tie was broken by someone cleaning the house and he wanted me to do something with the tie’s broken shards to make it into a new sculpture, so I edit those shards into like a big kind of paperweight. He is a fan of glass because he went to an undergraduate school that had glass in Indiana, and he really fell in love with the material. He made a documentary about making that [Editors Note: “Clear Reception” is the Documentary]. Also another thing - so he has a duct tape cell phone holder of different colors on it and it became this big mass of duct tape and plaid and he wanted that reproduced in glass, which I was able to do. He gets very attached to things!

AM: So what’s on your bucket list now?

DC: Well, I’m heading up to the Corning Museum. The next thing is I got asked to be in the show in Venice, so I have to make pieces for that, which I’m calling the project Big Fruit. I’m sticking with fruit. When I was thinking of what to do in Corning, I wanted to turn the fruit project into lighting.

AM: You had won a residency at Corning from the show, right?

DC: That was years ago, but now I applied. So I was two weeks in there, the museum hot shop… they have different hot shops there… I ended up making car parts there, because I was like let’s let me do something that’s not fruits or vegetables... so I made like a car mufflers with big plumes of exhaust coming out of them and hubcaps as the jewelry of the car. So my goal was non-toxic masculinity and that was represented by the car, so glass can transform anything that I thought into something gorgeous and beautiful.

AM: You worked on a cool project with Cake Boss as well?

DC: Oh yeah. That was another TV program. Yeah. Buddy Valastro - Cake versus Glass. His production team found me because he was doing a special for Christmas time or the holidays. It was going to be cake against other materials. And they reached out to me because they wanted to use glass. Glass was one of the mediums. Set design was one of the meat. Legos was one of the mediums. Toys was, I think. So they reached out to me. And they did a four-episode series, which is Buddy versus, and I was the Buddy versus Glass. Okay, I forget the exact prompt now, but it was something about “The Night Before Christmas.” And Buddy did a cake where Santa Claus crashed into a house. He does these huge elaborate installations with armatures underneath -

AM: Yeah they’re crazy! Our jaws were just dropped when we binged a Buddy Versus Duff season recently when we were working around the clock during on a staycation at Coda Williamsburg, ironic no? So much creativity, passion and skill for both of them!

DC: I did a christmas cookie that was out for Santa that got eaten by a mouse. So it was a mouse that ate part of a cookie, and the cookie thought the mouse was in love with it, but the mouse ended up eating the Christmas cookie, so it was not true love. We had two judges. He was on the left side of the stage and I was on the right side of the stage.

AM: So what happened?

DC: I won. He was great [about it].

AM: What are some of your favorite museums and gallery exhibitions?

DC: I like Friedman Benda Gallery. It’s a furniture art gallery. Salon 94. As far as museums go, my preference is the Whitney in New York. The gallery I showed in - Traore gallery. That’s cool. Gotham was doing an ashtray exhibit - they have a gallery in addition to the store where they show some lifestyle things like clothing, and also an art gallery. [Editor’s Note: The Exhibit is called “The Smoking Section.”] It’s a really cool art gallery because they do show things that maybe can’t go anywhere else, like an ashtray show. For that I used a traditional Venetian style goblet that has a dragon in the stem. It’s still there in their store.

AM: What are some of the things you like to do in your downtime when you’re not glass blowing or glass working?

DC: I do yoga okay with Three, because she teaches yoga and I don’t think it would be as fun if she wasn’t teaching. It’s great because that [helps] the flexibility part, especially as you get older, you have to keep limber. And then skiing, we went skiing. I’m a beginning skier, really, but I’m enjoying it. That’s new for me. Then dining and going to movies.

AM: How do you like having a studio office at Brooklyn Glass?

DC: Brooklyn Glass is like a shop that is really devoted to having artists fabricate their work. So there’s two shops near here. One is Urban Glass, which is a non-for-profit artist organization or arts organization. And then there’s this one, which is Brooklyn Glass. I like this one. Well, first of all, I have a studio within this one. And it’s really like a community here that’s a small community that I can rely on to talk ideas over and to help. And so it just feels like more of a community to me than the larger space down the street.

So I like that. And it’s just really focused on professionals here. They have an educational program, but it’s really only at night. So during the day, it’s all professionals working here, which is great. And it’s just a good range of projects coming through that you can see different things being made and different people coming in. They have several departments, including neon, fabrication, hot sculpting or hot blowing, and cold working the finishing area studios where drilling and grinding and cutting of the glass is done. So getting special shapes outside of what you can do in the hot shop. That’s here too. It’s a nice small shop.

AM: It was great making some Forgotten Potatoes together, we look forward to some Eggs & Fruit another time!

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PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT | Paul Farkas shot with Sony Alpha |

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see MAESTRO OF MAGIC | Deborah Czeresko in mag.