But that’s exactly where he is today.

Grove moved to Espoo, Finland, to work as the Glass Workshop Master at Aalto University, in 2020 – a move that started more than a decade before.

When he graduated, Grove wanted to be a high school physics teacher, inspired by a high school physics teacher he had at FDSH. He spent a semester at a community college in California before returning to Fort Dodge to enroll at Iowa Central Community College.

While taking classes at Iowa Central, Grove also worked as a tattoo artist at Permanent Collections in Fort Dodge.

-Submitted photo
Slate Grove, a Fort Dodge native, now runs the glass workshop at Aalto University in Finland.

“I was always into art,” he said. “One of my older brothers was really good at drawing so I kind of idolized him like most little brother’s do.”

He said he doesn’t remember taking any art classes in high school, but he did start taking art courses at Iowa Central.

A few years later, his girlfriend at the time convinced him to apply to the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he ended up earning a scholarship to attend. He continued tattooing in Cleveland for the first few semesters of art school.

Having grown up in a family with a long history with automobiles and drag racing, Grove saw himself becoming an industrial designer, eventually designing cars in Detroit.

“I had never even thought about how glass was formed,” he said. “I had never watched any videos or understood what glassblowing was.”

So out of curiosity, Grove decided to sign up for a glassblowing class at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and just a few weeks into the class, decided he was going to be a glass major.

Shortly before Grove started graduate school at Illinois State University, he was running a glass studio in North Carolina at the Penland School of Crafts. A couple of students came through the glass studio who were from Finland and he got to know them. When one of the students returned to Finland to teach at a technical school in the “oldest, continuous-running glass village in Finland,” she invited Grove to come to Finland to teach during the summer of 2010.

“When I got here to teach, it was what would be considered a hot sculpting class, so it’s very much not like making vases or bowls or cups or anything like that,” he said. “More making sculpture, and very little of that had ever been done or taught in Finland.”

Grove said it was exciting for his first time going overseas and teaching something that was new and different on the glass landscape in Finland.

He returned to Finland the following two summers to collaborate with a well-known designer and glassblower on a new series of the designer’s work.

During those trips to Finland, Grove fell in love with the European country.

“The people, the countryside, the atmosphere, all of those things were really, really wonderful,” he said. “So I kind of was just looking for a reason and a way to get back here.”

When the position he now holds at Aalto University opened up last year, Grove jumped at the opportunity to work at one of the highest ranked universities in northern Europe, and one of the highest ranked art schools in the world.

Prior to moving back to Finland in 2020, Grove was also a professor and ran the glass studio at Ball State University from 2016 to 2019, and did the same at Illinois State from 2019 to 2020.

Grove’s master’s degree thesis was titled “Everyday Heroes” and inspired by the blue-collar industries and workers he saw and knew while growing up in Fort Dodge. He graduated with his master’s of fine arts degree in 2013.

“I made a large number of glass tools and items that people work with when they work with their hands,” he said.

He used clear glass to symbolize workers like cleaning staff, mechanics, plumbers and other people that many don’t notice are there until they need them. His work was featured in a glass art magazine published in New York City and a few months later, he was contacted by the studio manager for Yoko Ono, who wanted Grove to fabricate some glass art pieces for her.

“I think we made seven or eight of these glass hammers for her,” Grove said.

He continued doing glass art series for Ono over the next several years, but he never had the opportunity to meet her in person. The glass art pieces have been on display in her galleries in Tokyo, Manhattan and London.

“I still have all the checks that she sent me with Yoko Ono Lennon printed on the check, which is something that I’ve just held onto because I thought it was cool,” Grove said.

Grove is formally trained in glass art, but he also spends a lot of time doing sculpture and working with steel and wood. During his undergraduate years, he also minored in jewelry.

“I love working with glass, but it’s not always the right material for what I’m trying to say,” he said.

Three or four years ago, he started melting crayons to make AK-47 bullets.

“To kind of talk about, like current issues and teaching kids about guns,” the artist explained. “What’s the right age? What do we teach them when we teach them about guns?”

He explained that those kinds of conceptual ideas don’t really make sense with glass, so he took his knowledge of sculpture and moldmaking to create the silicone molds of the bullets and used his oven at home to melt the crayons into the mold.

Grove takes inspiration for his art from many places, including current events and the political landscape.

“Maybe not always political, but it’s always something to do with what the world that I’m living in, what’s around me and what’s going on,” he said.

Being an American in Finland has forced Grove to make some adjustments, but he said it hasn’t been all that difficult.

“Everyone here speaks amazingly good English, especially in the capital region,” he said.

There are some small things that are similar throughout most European countries, Grove said, like houses and apartments are smaller, and even refrigerators are smaller.

Some of the things Grove misses most about home are barbecue and grilled sweet corn. He said he also misses seeing his mom, who now lives in California, but said they talk all the time.

While being thousands of miles from his hometown, Grove keeps in touch through social media.

“I love watching Facebook for stuff from Fort Dodge,” he said. “There are so many really talented athletes that are just incredible people.”

The man who held the Glass Workshop Master position prior to Grove had been in the position for about 25 years, Grove said. He said that he feels pretty secure in his new job and plans to be there for a while.

“I would love to stay in Finland, and I think that I will,” he said. “But I’m also not tying myself to anywhere.”

Grove looks back fondly on his childhood in Fort Dodge and the dreams he had in high school.

“I’ve realized over the last maybe 10 years now that I am still a physics teacher,” he said. “I just do it with glass instead of in a classroom with a book. I love what Fort Dodge gave me as far as a small-town atmosphere with friends and friendly faces, even with people I didn’t know. And I think that that’s helped me to be as successful as I have been in other parts of the country and world because there’s something about the way that I was raised and the place that I was raised that I think sticks with us forever.”

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)

• Daily Newsletter
• Breaking News
• Obituaries

Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

• Yes
• No