Pumpkins, fruit, flowers and a vast variety of other glass sculptures were on display at the annual Fall Sale by the Palo Alto High School Fiery Arts Booster Club last week.

The sale, which took place on Sept. 15 and 16, aimed to raise money to provide materials, maintenance and other support for the sculpture program at Paly as well as to manage the comprehensive sculpture curriculum.

“We have to raise a lot of money to keep this program going,” fine arts teacher Steve Ferrera said. “It’s totally self-funded.”

According to Ferrera, the program is funded entirely through sales like these and workshops offered by the Booster Club. The Fall Sale and Winter Sale constitute to about one-third of the operating budget of the program for the year.

“It’s a lot of work,” Ferrera said. “Our equipment gets used 24/7, so it wears out because there’s fire on it constantly.”

Due to this overuse, the school must continuously rebuild the equipment used in fire blowing classes. According to Ferrera, the sale this year is specifically for this purpose.

“[The sale] went well,” Ferrera said. “We raised enough money for a good down payment on our equipment rebuild.”

Professional glassblowers, who are also class teacher advisors (TAs), produced all the art shown at the sale, according to Ferrera.

“They do a lot of it over the summer, and some of it during the school year,” Ferrera said. “And that’s on top of teaching the [students].”

Ferrera says the TAs make the majority of the glass art. Most students do not have the skillsets to make art to sell yet, but do assist the TAs, according to Ferrera.

Junior Phoebe Crabb also gave her input on how the production for the sale went.

“There are students who have been doing glass for a while,” Crabb said. “They have some of their pieces in the sale as well.”

Crabb says that one of the easiest pieces to make is a pumpkin and because the glass sale was held in the fall, pumpkins were the main attraction.

“Even if you don’t do a really good job with [making a pumpkin], it still looks impressive and it’s something that you can be proud of,” Crabb said.

The Fiery Arts Booster Club will hold the second-largest glass sale this winter after the fall sale in the hallways of the main Paly office on Dec. 12.