A glass act
The coast’s newest treasure hunt looks absolutely smashing
For the past few weeks, the Mays family: Kali, Dayton, three-year old Madison and one-year old Mason, have been searching for pieces of glass in public places.
“We have been searching almost every week since this started,” Kali said. “We have found four coins so far.”
The glass coins are one of the items hidden every week for a new scavenger hunt event, in which finders can not only keep the handmade treasures, but also use them to get discounts at participating businesses and even enter a raffle for more prizes.
“We have lots of fun and it gets us up and outside early,” said Kali. “If you pick up trash and post a picture of it, you can win prizes for that too, and there is always trash, even after last week’s big SOLVE cleanup event.”
I walked with the family for about 20 minutes and, sure enough, with the help of Kali’s niece-dog Cricket and sister Kyla Vrell, a coin was located, to the clear delight of Madison.
“Mason is a bit too young to quite get it,” Kali said. “But Maddie thinks it’s really exciting every single time.”
The scavenger hunt was started by Aaron Sertich and Megan Tinder of ThornMeadow Glassworks, who entered into the project almost by accident.
“It was originally planned to be a one-off event,” Megan said. “but the response from the community was so overwhelmingly positive, we felt like we needed to start figuring out a way to keep it going.”
The logistics are these: each week a sponsoring company helps underwrite the cost of 10 large glass gift bags and a participating company also contributes to the cost of producing 50 small glass gift bags.
ThornMeadow blows the glass, assembles the gift bags and hides and photographs them in hiding places all along the Central Coast from Depoe Bay to Pacific City.
They post the first picture clues on Facebook and Instagram Saturday morning at 8 am, followed by the next clues at 10 am and final super clues after noon.
Finders take a picture with their glass treasure and post it on the ThornMeadow Facebook page.
Each weekly hunt ends with a raffle for two extra-large mystery glass prizes. All the people who found a treasure or collected trash and sent a picture are automatically eligible for the raffle.
It's quite a few moving parts, but for the participants it’s just fun.
“Since we launched the hunt in late January, participation has soared,” Megan said. “We went from 300 followers to 1,200 Facebook followers in one week. The people who do it are super engaged, which makes it a lot of fun for us too. We’ve also had so much help; we might have let it go by now if it weren’t for the people volunteering and the businesses helping us out.”
The ThornMeadow studio opened in 2019, built by Megan and Aaron on their farm just outside Lincoln City. It is now open to the public for classes, private tours and custom workshops.
“Our business is about the kids and the community,” Megan said. “We had so much help getting this place built, we feel very strongly about giving back.”
In the two years since they got started, they have built up a thriving business that provides glass art for local fundraisers, the community and more than a dozen galleries along the Oregon Coast.
Aaron has been blowing glass in Lincoln City for the past 11 years and has worked in and taught glass art all over the world including Italy, Germany and Russia.
Though Megan’s background was in sales, she is now a trained production glass blower. Their shared passion for glass not only brought them together but propelled them to create ThornMeadow Glassworks.
“Of course, the hunt is open to everyone, but it’s targeted to our locals,” Megan said. “We wanted to give them something to do, since it’s surprisingly hard to find new fun things to do around here. The idea is to get locals exploring and finding new outdoor places they might not even know about.”
Megan added that as the program has grown and new elements are added, the goal remains to make the hunt about more than just fun.
“Some of the program elements, like bringing the coins into local businesses, are again to try to help locals, but this time local businesses, who are struggling so much right now.”
Megan and Aaron dipped a toe into the water of using ThornMeadow as a positive force in the community during the height of the pandemic, staring with the “Floats for Frontlines” campaign, where frontline workers could win glass floats; and making glass ribbons for people to hang in their windows in support of them. They also made terrariums for quarantine kits that the Lincoln City Cultural Center sent out to local kids.
“As the pandemic stretched on and people became even more physically and emotionally stretched, we continued looking for ways to inspire people,” Aaron said. “We thought about how glass art is part of our city’s culture and how we were all a little stir crazy at home; we have a nine-year-old and a toddler.”
While keeping all the plates spinning for the scavenger hunt and running their small business, Megan and Aaron are also commuting back and forth to Portland to spend as much time with baby Apollo, who was due in June but was ready for the world and made his appearance early. He is growing strong and will soon be ready to come home to be with his brothers.
ThornMeadow has also partnered with the Lincoln City Parks and Recreation on a monthly hunt which gives them access to all the department’s parks for hiding treasure.
“People are hungry for engagement and safe, fun family-friendly activities,” Aaron said. “Watching the response, seeing how much fun people are having is so inspiring. We love seeing individuals and families enjoy our beautiful outdoor spaces and have adventures.”
ThornMeadow Glassworks is currently open by appointment only. For more information, go to www.thornmeadowglassworks.com or call 310-480-1174.