My first introduction to fines arts came when I was ten years old and my grandmother sat me down one Saturday with a blank canvas and some oil paints and a brush. She gave me my first lesson in still life painting. The subject, my favorite stuffed bear. It really turned out well (well, so I thought at the time). I continued to draw and paint off and on throughout my school years. After school I began painting again with oils and watercolors. But somewhere in the back of my mind, it was glass that really held my attraction. Stained glass types of work appear time and again in my early works; I never realized until much later in life when I look back on those projects.
I come from a remarkable talented family of artists. My great-grandmother and grandmother spent their retirement years with easels and oil paints diligently covering every flat surface they could find with images of beaches, flowers, and mountains. My grandfather turns out all kinds of objects in wood from his shop from fine furniture to turned objects on the lathe. My father is adept at sculpture in copper, brass, silver and gold leaf. While none of us have gotten rich or become world-famous, we all have made, and continue to make our own contributions to society.
I believe we all have something that fascinates us. Mine would be glass. The marvel that is chemistry converts sand and other chemicals into a transparent material that can yield every color imaginable. Alchemy that goes back to the first century AD when the Romans began crafting glass into windows.
My history in glass isn’t quite as ancient. I was browsing a local bookstore and happened upon a “do it yourself” manual on the art of stained glass construction. Why it never occurred to me before that an ordinary person like me could learn the art I’ll never known. I bought the book and a new world began. My aspiration is to revive the art of the medieval painted windows with subject matter from today’s life.