By Tate DeCarlo
“A lot of people asked me, ‘What is a Mexican doing in Alaska?’ Well, adventure!” Renan Guzman laughed, reminiscing on his eight-year stint working odd jobs in the northernmost state.
Guzman is unabashed in his appreciation for discovery, and his eye for beauty in the mundane. His life of adventure is a testament to his curious disposition, making his insights poignant and his compassion genuine. These characteristics are evident in all of his stories, from his time living and working in Alaska to being recognized by renowned glassblower Dale Chihuly.
As an integral staff member here at the University of Puget Sound, you’ve likely seen Guzman’s friendly face around campus, emptying trash bins or helping to fix something in an academic building. If you’ve been lucky enough to talk with him, you know Guzman’s outgoing kindness and eagerness to support the student body. On Feb. 17, he joined me in the ASUPS media room for an interview, happy to take time out of his day – even after a full shift – to share his life story.
Before he had even settled in his chair, Guzman shared anecdotes from his past at such a high rate that my questions only seemed to slow him down. Originally from Mexico City, he has lived an eventful life. Guzman had visited family in the States since he was 16, but it wasn’t until he turned 25 that he moved to the US. “In one of those visits, somebody told me that there was a way I could get a green card. That was when Ronald Reagan was president, 1988,” he explained.
Guzman’s first home after immigrating to the US was in Roswell, New Mexico, but his motive in moving to the States was to reach Alaska; Guzman had long been captivated by the polar climate, and dreamed of working on an arctic fishing vessel. He soon left Roswell for Kodiak, Alaska with the help of a friend who secured him a job at a local cannery, and though he describes living there as a “great experience,” he clarifies that the labor was intense. “Hard work. Long hours. Killing weather. I say killing weather is because you make one mistake, in three, four hours, you’re a popsicle,” he said.
Risking frozen appendages in temperatures that dipped below negative 35 degrees – “One time my ears froze!” – the work itself was just as risky as the weather. His responsibilities as a fish sorter at the cannery once even brought Guzman face to face with a hungry sea lion. Guzman escaped unscathed but terrified, one of his many brushes with danger that have prompted his unwavering zest for life.
Guzman’s time in Alaska was full of joy, despite the often-challenging conditions. He fell in love with the country’s natural landscape and was lucky enough to have witnessed the Aurora Borealis multiple times – a phenomenon many around him who’d lived in Alaska longer never managed to see. He described it as “more than beautiful,” elaborating that underneath it, “you feel like you’re a speck of dust, and then you know how big the universe is.”
In addition to the cannery, Guzman worked a variety of jobs throughout his time in Alaska. He attempted work on a fishing boat to no avail, worked for Pizza Hut and other restaurants, and was a freight-driving, warehouse-working teamster at the Kodiak Coast Guard Base. Curious and eager to keep learning, Guzman filled his downtime with supplementary classes. “Since I had so much free time, you know, I started to do different things. I took some classes, welding, some computer classes. I became a hunter, got my license. I was trapping for folks a little bit,” he said.
Outside of work and education, Guzman loved riding his bike through the snow to the nearby Abercrombie State Park. His favorite pastime was setting up a hammock between the trees, laying out with some good music, and soaking in the scenery. “Oceans over there, mountains over here, I’m in the middle of all of it,” he reminisced.
Guzman also had friends in Kodiak who worked for KMXT, a public radio station intended to reach the fishing boats out at sea. He loved to join them in the studio for their three-hour ‘Ritmo Latino’ show on Saturdays, and when those friends left Alaska, they left Guzman in charge of the show. He ran ‘Ritmo Latino’ from 1995-96, a time during which he played “mostly Latin music, but pulled from reggae and other things.”
Now, 30 years later, Guzman has returned to the radio with KUPS, hosting his show ‘Friday Night Gravitational.’ Inspired by late night bike rides with his friends in Alaska, Guzman shares his longtime love for reggae every Friday at 7 p.m. He joined the station at the suggestion of Eliana Goldberg, the General Manager of KUPS from 2022-23. “One day I was picking up garbage and that, and I saw Eliana. I told her that station reminded me a lot of Alaska, because they’re essentially the same, you know, and she told me where to put an application,” Guzman said. “I thought, well, wait a minute. This is a rare opportunity, and a good one!”
In addition to his presence in the campus community, Guzman is a talented glassblower and has volunteered with Hilltop Artists school for more than 10 years. There, Guzman shares his passion through a glassblowing program founded by Chiluly, aimed to help Tacoma youth stay out of trouble. “Selecting that channel, that energy the right way, and I know a lot of the kids that come out of this, they get jobs, they do well,” Guzman says about graduates from the program. “It’s satisfying, that you know, you can help somebody to have a better life, you know, to not go the wrong way.”
Guzman, who is an awarded artist recognized by Chihuly himself, expresses his curiosity about the world through his progressive glassblowing style. “I like to mix different techniques. Okay, fused glass, stained glass, neon. I like optics, like lenses. I like almost anything that has to do with glass,” he explained. “I like functional, useful things that look pretty.”
His portfolio is truly impressive, everything from bottles and drinkware blown of glass in a camouflage pattern to what he calls his Edge Pieces – massive fish bowls and vases blown in a manner that allows them to hang over the edge of a table or mantlepiece. His Instagram (@agarenan) proudly displays multi-tiered vases that hold flowers inside and out, and mugs with coiled, snakelike handles blown with a technique discovered by a French artist in the late 1800s. Guzman’s dream is to open his own glass blowing business – “I’d like to do that until the last day of my life,” he said.
Along with his artistic pursuits, Guzman is also something of a scientist, and enjoys conducting experiments with electronics and his Tesla coil at home. On one occasion, his curiosity about the physical properties of a glass phenomenon called the Prince Rupert drop – created when a drop of molten glass is quenched in water – led him to reach out to the faculty of the University’s physics department. Eager to explore the breakage speed of a Prince Rupert drop, which explodes under pressure at its tail, Renan got permission to utilize the department’s high-speed camera. His experiment drew a crowd, and he smiled as he remembered the fun he shared with professors in Thompson Hall.
Exchanging a few words with Renan is almost guaranteed to brighten your day, so next time you see him around campus, wave hello and ask him about reggae or riding his bike – I bet you’ll leave the conversation smiling.