By Kathy Henry Dowell

Although their first studio was an old barn and their mascot is a lobe-challenged bovine, there is nothing countrified about the artwork of Mark Woodham and Tommy Lockart.

Consider the sophisticated sculpture that hangs in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

“Intermingling Convergence,” or “Flo” as it is affectionately known, is a blown glass and stainless steel masterpiece. Measuring 20 feet by 10 feet by 3 feet, and suspended some 25 feet in the air, Flo was chosen through a competitive process. The commissioned piece has over 300 individual components and took six months to make and install.

Lockart and Woodham, both graduates of USC's Department of Art, want to produce more projects like Flo, but that takes time: time to find such opportunities, time to submit proposals, and time to make the piece. And because they run One Eared Cow Glass Inc. themselves, most of their work for now is smaller-scaled sculptures, vases, bowls, and custom sinks and lighting.

“We offer original, unique, affordable, hand-made gifts for someone who wants to make a statement,” said Woodham, a Columbia native. “We enjoy sculptural work, and we mix up our ‘regular’ items by refreshing them with color or shape for our clients.”

Located in Columbia's Vista, One Eared Cow is one of only two working glass studios in South Carolina—the other is in Conway—that offers visitors the rare opportunity to see skilled craftsmen using the techniques and tools of an art form dating back thousands of years.

Lockart and Woodham do it all themselves: creating, marketing, accounting. They even build their own equipment.

“No company builds a furnace like we want and need, so we construct our own,” said Lockart, who is from Spartanburg.

There are three furnaces in the studio. The first melts molten glass and stays hot all the time, right around 2,200°F. The second, a reheating chamber, reheats the glass at 2,200° to 2,300°, so that the artists can continue to work with it. A third furnace, called an annealing oven, maintains a temperature of about 950° and cools down finished pieces gradually to avoid breaking and cracking.

“We work within a time frame, before the glass cools, which gives us 12 to 15 hours to complete a piece,” Lockart said.

To begin a piece, glass made from the raw ingredients of sand, limestone, and other compounds is melted in the first furnace. The glass is then left to “fine out,” which allows the bubbles to rise out of the mass. The material is then picked up on the end of a rod that the artist is constantly spinning. The rod will stay in motion until the piece is finished.

The artist coaxes the glass into the desired form by taking advantage of gravity, using various tools, and blowing air through the rod to expand the size of the piece. The work is kept hot until it is finished and then is cooled slowly in the annealing oven.

Lockart and Woodham typically do not work from sketches or inspired forms. “I work to fill an inside need to create, not from inspiration,” Lockart said. “We go into the studio knowing what we can achieve, and then we take it from there.”

One Eared Cow, or at least its creative synergy, was born the moment three USC undergraduates met. They were seated across from each other in their first glass class. Each student—Lockart, Woodham, and Bob McKeown—was majoring in art, but not in glass studio.

“Before USC, we had done some two-dimensional work and some woodworking, but we had not been exposed to glass,” Lockart said. “Professor Harry Stewart was the instructor of that first glass course, and everyone walked away from that class going, ‘Wow.’ At first, working with glass was almost alien-like: the physicality of it, the heat, the use of gravity. But working with this foreign material was very intriguing.”

Intriguing, indeed: Lockart, Woodham, and McKeown changed their majors to glass studio, an area of study no longer available at USC due to funding cuts.

“I taught Mark Woodham—who was a graphic design major when he fell in love with glass—and have kept up with his progress over the years. My husband, Lee Siple, also taught Mark,” said Cynthia Colbert, a USC art professor.

“I am very proud of Mark and Tommy's success. I still have a wonderful puppet Mark created as part of an assignment and gave to me at the end of my class years ago. It was well crafted, and has held up to many years of using it as an example of fine craftsmanship.”

After graduating in the early 1990s, the three artists knew the basics of glassblowing. With advice and help from Stewart, their instructor, they started making their own equipment. The next step was to find a studio space.

They were offered a rent-free barn in farm-dotted Bishopville, and they set out to clean and furnish it. Someone found an antique wooden cow's head, minus an ear, and nailed it jauntily to the barn's front door.

The three artists began as traveling salesmen, making items in their rural studio and then taking the items to shows and galleries.

“We'd travel to locations that were within a day's driving range, and that got our art noticed and our name out there,” Lockart said.

After about three years, McKeown moved on. Thinking the glass might be greener in the city, Lockart and Woodham moved their enterprise into a small space in Columbia.

“After a while, we said, ‘You know, we're working in our studio and people come by, watch us, and buy our stuff,’ ” Lockart said. “So, once we were established in the city and saw we had a market, we got store footage. That turned out to be better than any type of advertising.”

Now in its fifth—and final—location, One Eared Cow has a working studio with audience seating, and a large gallery. One wall of the gallery pays homage to the studio's roots: it looks like a wooden barn with a sliding cattle door.