Rob Levin

Rob was born at an early age and grew up in Dundalk, Maryland--the steel mill area on the southeast side of Baltimore. For years, his brother told him he was an only child, a statement he believed until his sister was born. His father owned a drug store and Rob worked at the soda fountain, a source of many early cavities. The store began carrying a large supply of camera equipment..."In 1958 my Dad won a trip to Hawaii for selling a lot of Bell & Howell cameras. He and my Mom brought back a coconut, a ukulele for my brother, and a Hawaiian shirt for me. The uke stayed in the closet for two years. Then I picked it up and started playing it... Stephen Foster tunes, stuff like that.

"I was also listening to Bob Dylan and trying to play his stuff on the ukulele. That didn't quite make it, so I switched to baritone uke. A while later I wandered into Ted's Music and rented a guitar. Finally got a Sears Silvertone for my 14th birthday. I started listening to a lot of old-time music and blues.

"I got interested in doing lighting and set design for my high school theater productions and went to Denison University thinking that's what I was going to do. But I started taking more art classes and by the time I graduated, I was a potter." Rob took a clay class at Penland School of Crafts in 1970, saw people blowing glass, and was hooked. (That was also the year he got married to lovely Wanda.) He returned the following year & took his first glass class with Audrey Handler. He was invited back to Penland in 1975 to teach glassblowing, and stayed on as Resident Glassblower until 1980. Today, Rob is considered one of the leading glass artists in the US, with his work in numerous exhibitions and collections throughout the world. You can check out his work at www.robertlevin.com.

While living at Penland, Rob was also re-discovering the traditional mountain music of the Appalachians and wound up playing with two of the great fiddle players of the area, Red Wilson and Bruce Greene. In 2005 he also started playing with Hot Duck Soup. Fortunately, he still had the Hawaiian shirt.