Born in Michigan, she grew up in Tennessee and Virginia not far from West Virginia, the home of Blenko Glass. “I remember going to Blenko as a child and watching the glassblowers. My parents had collections of Blenko glass,” Gott reminisced. Her father, an innkeeper, instilled in her a sense of business acumen that helps her run a successful studio.

She studied art in college, but as a painter. It wasn’t until later that two pivotal classes shifted her focus. The first was at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied with Albinas Elskus, author of The Art of Painting on Glass. This turned her attention to stained glass, which she quickly embraced. The next was at Penland School of Craft, where she took hot glass classes with Paul Marioni and Stephen Dee Edwards. She recalled, “The connection [to glass] was strong, deep, and immediate because I’d always been attracted to that quality of light as a painter doing watercolors.”

After receiving her master’s from Kent State University and studying at Pilchuck Glass School, Gott settled in Florida. She chose Tampa because of the growing glass community in the area, which has since come to be known as The Glass Coast. Armed with a good understanding of refractory materials and design, she laid out initial studio plans on graph paper. “I had a lot of great studio assistants along the way who helped me build the equipment, and I oversaw all of that,” she said. “The architect that was involved was also a glassblower. There was a lot of synchronicity.”