In her Silver Lake ADU, this L.A. artist turns glass and clay into something magical - BERITAJA

Just about each area of Julie Burton’s Silver Lake workplace is filled pinch sparkling solid jewelry — immoderate real, immoderate symbolic — and whimsical ceramic figures inspired by Midcentury Modern design.

Elegant hand-blown solid vases beryllium beside ceramic crater pots connected lukewarm cherry shelves. Bright teardrop earrings bent from metallic tins filled pinch Japanese cooling beads. In the kitchen, hand-carved ceramic birds, whales, elephants and owls look retired from the counters, surrounded by lidded cache pots and dense candlestick holders that consciousness bully successful your hand. Nature shows up everyplace successful her studio: rocks successful solid jars, pieces of driftwood and mini “forests” she’s made from glass, brass and walnut.

“I’m a full-time hallucinator without drugs,” Burton says jokingly about her wide scope of work. “If I’m not making something, I’m ever looking about and reasoning about what to make next.”

A metallic table she recovered connected Craigslist anchors the 546-square-foot accessory dwelling unit, aliases ADU, wherever she works. Architect Peter Kim designed the space, attached to her car shed successful Silver Lake, to beryllium backstage and afloat of light, pinch 10-foot ceilings, skylights and solid doors that unfastened onto a ample patio pinch seating.

Her workspace shows really productive she is. Long, colorful solid tubes capable pails connected the level and her desk. Tools are scattered passim the studio, including a plumber’s torch for pouring glass, crockpots for pickling and a dental instrumentality she uses to stamp her logo, VM, short for Verre Modern, onto her ceramics.

At 56, the Los Angeles autochthonal took an different way to becoming an artist. After earning a grade successful governmental subject from UC Berkeley, she worked astatine Amoeba successful San Francisco and later joined the manner marque Esprit. “I was expected to beryllium a data-entry person,” she says, “but I taught myself Quark and became a shape maker.”

In this series, we item independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fibre artists, who are creating original products successful and about Los Angeles.

She admits she didn’t really cognize what she was doing. “I person a wont of taking jobs and changing them a bit. I’ve been fortunate to beryllium capable to style the jobs I’ve had.”

At 1 point, she considered becoming a professor of ineligible ethics, so, arsenic the girl of 2 lawyers, she applied to rule school. “That would beryllium an absorbing occupation today,” she adds pinch a barren consciousness of humor.

“Built-in desks, cabinets, shelves and a functioning room pinch antagonistic seating supply a light-filled artist’s workplace easy convertible to a freely surviving space,” designer Peter Kim says of the ADU.

Burton melts solid for jewelry pinch a plumbing torch.

She had ever loved art, particularly glass-blowing, but classes were excessively expensive. On a whim, she besides applied to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, aliases RISD. When she didn’t get into her apical rule schools, she chose RISD instead. There, she majored successful illustration and took a six-week wintertime glass-working people that changed her life.

“I instantly thought, ‘This is the best. I want to do this,’” she says. “I didn’t think, ‘Can I do solid blowing for a living?’” When she realized she didn’t want to create creation glass, her professor encouraged her to time off and “save $90,000 connected tuition for thing she wasn’t 100% behind.”

When a RISD friend introduced her to a glassblower successful Chattanooga who had blown solid connected an lipid rig, Burton moved to Tennessee and worked for the erstwhile merchant marine, making what she describes arsenic “funky glass.”

She later moved to New York and worked astatine the nonprofit Urban Glass successful Brooklyn. To salary disconnected her student loans, she besides waited tables and tutored kids for the PSAT and SAT.

After a friend gave her a speedy five-minute instruction successful lampworking — a type of glasswork that uses a torch aliases lamp to melt solid — she sewage truthful excited that she decided to commencement a jewelry business, though she says she “knew thing about jewelry.”

Glass necklaces, starting astatine $140, travel successful 135 different colors.

After a sadistic wintertime successful New York and arsenic her parents sewage older, she decided to move backmost to Los Angeles successful 2003. In L.A., she met her husband, had a boy who is about to move 15 and continued to turn her Verre Modern jewelry line. Over time, her activity expanded to see solid and brass mobiles and wall hangings, which are now sold successful independent shops and depository gift stores crossed the country.

Designer Carol Young has carried Burton’s jewelry astatine her Undesigned showroom successful Los Feliz for 20 years. Young says that Burton “transforms humble solid into modern heirlooms — simple, elegant, softly precious pieces for women who don’t request the obviousness of gemstones aliases position jewelry. My mundane brace are her clear solid Valenti earrings, which someway spell pinch perfectly everything.”

When she took a ceramics people successful 2015, she started making vases, animals and decor, often hand-building and carving her unsocial vessels while watching TV successful her surviving room. Like pinch about things, she says, she made ceramics her own.

“When I was blowing municipality glass, I didn’t usage accepted Italian glass-blowing techniques because I worked for a feline connected a upland successful Tennessee,” she said. “I didn’t cognize thing about jewelry, but a five-minute lampworking instruction group maine connected my path. If personification who does ceramics for a surviving were to watch maine do what I do pinch clay, they’d opportunity that’s not the correct measurement to do it.”

Burton worked successful a workplace connected Spring Street successful downtown Los Angeles for 20 years earlier she and her hubby added the ADU successful 2023. “It was built pinch the thought that we mightiness unrecorded successful the workplace someday aliases fto a family personnel unrecorded there,” she says, adding pinch a laugh: “It’s embarrassingly bully arsenic a moving studio. That is decidedly not really my workplace downtown looked.”

Burton’s room features Inax Japanese ceramic tile and untreated cherry cabinets.

The cutouts successful the obstruction about her patio conscionable extracurricular the ADU are lined pinch her ceramics, soil dollars, driftwood and rocks from Burton’s travels. “I’m inspired by nature,” she says.

The one-bedroom, one-bathroom ADU was built connected an unused broadside gait of the ample area lot, truthful the two-car car shed could still beryllium utilized for retention and parking. Architect Kim says, “While converting a car shed to an ADU could adhd surviving abstraction aliases rental income, they’re often small, request a batch of structural activity and return distant storage.” He adds, “Building an ADU connected unused abstraction lets you support the car shed and, for illustration pinch Julie’s ADU, creates a spacious, backstage beforehand patio connected to her workplace and surviving room.”

Burton looks backmost connected her unsocial profession way and feels grateful she could take her ain direction. When she studied illustration astatine RISD, she recalls being surrounded by talented drafters. “I wasn’t the champion illustrator, and I retrieve the professor told maine that half of illustrations are ideas. That was inspiring.”

That thought continues to animate her art, moreover aft galore years.

“I’ve tried welding, woodworking, painting, drawing, glass-blowing, lampworking and moving pinch clay,” she says about moving pinch her hands. “Give maine a medium, and I’ll springiness it a go.”

Burton useful connected a facet vessel successful her Los Feliz surviving room.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)