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Raleigh glass blower helps bring Nights of Lights to life

Artist and glass blower Nate Sheaffer is most at home when he's creating.

Posted Updated

By
Kathy Hanrahan
, WRAL lifestyle editor
RALEIGH, N.C. — Artist and glass blower Nate Sheaffer is most at home when he's creating.

The University of North Carolina graduate said he can spend hours heating and bending glass into designs like holiday elves. It's almost like therapy for him. The muscle memory takes over and he just creates.

On this day, Sheaffer and his team are at his Raleigh studio, Glas, working on the feet for some holiday elves that will appear at WRAL's Nights of Lights at Dix Park starting Nov. 20. He carefully holds the long cylinders of glass slowly turning each piece before stretching it out and manipulating the pliable material. It's like second-nature, as he's been sculpted glass since college and doing it professionally since 1986.

"We have spent about 15 years in this pandemic and every single one of us has fatigue on some level - creative, personal social - and just to have a change of events and something bright and shiny to distract, maybe help heal a few people's brains," Sheaffer says, not shying away from the pandemic has had on himself and his business. He had relocated to New Orleans not long before the pandemic brought his business to a standstill.

By the end of the 2020, however, Sheaffer was creating again - making several lighted decorations for WRAL's first Nights of Lights, a drive-thru event which includes 1.3 miles of illuminated trees, festival light displays and local art installations.

"Last year we put together as many things as we could on a short notice to help brighten it up. This year we've got quite a bit more notice and have had a lot of fun creating some fun images, lot of elves, some surprise things with Santa and with a very well-known elf," Sheaffer said. "This year, we have in store 36 elves in different positions greeting visitors in different ways with their own acrobatics, animated elves in odd little places doing odd Elfin things."

Sheaffer said visitors will want to keep an eye out for a 12-foot tall Santa near the end of the show, and also an animated Elf on a Shelf popping out of a gift box.

"Typically people don't think neon and Christmas, but if you go back in time in the 30s and 40s, a lot of the really fantastic displays were neon," Sheaffer said. "There was nothing like LEDs and most other traditional lighting elements at that point were either too expensive to operate, or they were few and far between in terms of someone doing creative work with them."

For each of the 36 elves that will appear throughout WRAL Nights of Lights, Sheaffer estimates about 600 moving parts.

Tickets are on sale now for WRAL Nights of Lights, which starts Friday, Nov. 20, and runs most nights through Dec. 24. This year's event includes 29 nights, an increase from last year. Less tickets are also being sold per time slot to reduce traffic congestion.

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