Artist Gallery

Muffin Spencer-Devlin

Muffin Spencer-Devlin spent the better part of her formative years chasing a golf ball toward fame and fortune. She traveled and played and traveled and played and well, traveled and played on the LPGA Tour for twenty-one years. For the record, she won three LPGA events; the MasterCard International in 1984, the United Virginia Bank Classic in 1985 and the Ping-Cellular One in 1989 and currently sits at 83rd on the all time career money list with $1,054,902.

She retired to Laguna Beach in early 2000. Not one to beat a dead horse, she took an almost total hands off approach to the game. Other than to host and support a yearly charity golf event for H.O.M.E.S., Inc, (Helping Our Mentally Ill Experience Success) at Mesa Verde C.C., she looked for stimulation beyond the realm of sport and professional golf. She spent a year as studio assistant to famed local sculptor, Cheryl Ekstrom. She learned to weld at OCC. She took the stone-sculpting course at the Laguna Beach Arts College. She tried a year of handyman-ing around town, yet nothing truly sparked her imagination or ignited her passion.

And then in 2004, Muffin met Marni, a stunningly beautiful and successful entrepreneur and artist who was looking for help with her golf game. The lessons turned into dates. Two years later they decided to get married. And that is how it all started. Muffin came up with the idea of making 160 glass paperweights as gifts for their wedding guests, even though her only experience with glass at that point was watching her best friend, Megan Ekstrom, blow on her own or assist John Barber at the Sawdust Festival. Megan gracefully agreed to the project and more importantly, agreed to teach Muffin along the way.

“At first I was afraid of the heat and the flippy-floppy way the glass could get away from me,” she remembers, “but Megan’s patience as a teacher and my own persistence birthed a love for the process, a fascination with shape and a total passion for the application of color.”

“I began my own work on a smallish scale,” she explains. “Quite honestly, I was put off by getting something larger than a small bowl into the annealer all by myself. And then I loved what I”d made and realized I could put it in my pocket and gift it to a friend with great flair, as if I had a precious jewel to present.”

You may find more information about Muffin Spencer-Devlin’s golf career at www.lpga.com.