



SEATTLE -- Dozens of artists from around the West Coast gathered Friday in a rented studio. They huddled around scorching hot ovens of glass.



Joints were passed; Pink Floyd rattled the speakers. There was one collective goal:



To build the world's biggest bong.



And they say Seattle has lost its roots.





Artists work on the world's largest bong.





"Essentially this is the Freedom Bong," head glass blower Charles Lowrie told Q13 News. "This is the time of life we arriving to collective consciousness."



Friday was the first of a three-day event led by Jerome Baker Designs. It's the culmination of a collaborative effort to build a 24-foot bong, nicknamed #Bongzilla. The glass bong will weigh thousands of pounds, and will be on display at Cannabition, a cannabis museum planned for Las Vegas.



But before it's put together, the glass must be blown. No small feat for the artists, even with their decades of experience in blowing bongs.



"We're dipping up a good 45 to 50 pounds of hot glass out of this furnace," Lowrie says. "The furnace holds about a thousand pounds."



Anything this big in glass needs to be done in stages. Each day through Sunday, artists will be dipping and molding, all toward the final construction. The bong is expected to be finished in a month or two.



"This thing will be over two stories high," Lowrie said. "(Each blow) is just one of the components to that masterpiece."



The bong was dreamed up as a way to "create works of art that bring relevance to the functional art glass world," a spokesperson for Jerome Baker Designs said. They chose Seattle as the place to construct the bong because of Washington's marijuana laws. Of course, the informal marijuana holiday of April 20 played a roll.



"We feel the timing is perfect" a spokesperson said.



For more information on the events and bong, visit Jerome Baker Designs' website.