I love working with stained glass; it's like painting with light.
Stained Glass
I started working with stained glass in 1991. My first piece was a Tiffany dragonfly lampshade, which was made up of 800 some pieces. Since then, I've done everything from sculptural 3D pieces to traditional stained glass windows, mostly by commission.
My most recent project is a pool table lamp I made for Paula Weisel, a dear friend who owns Ketchikan's (world famous!) Arctic Bar. Paula chose the color scheme and, while picking glass for the project, I looked for pieces resembling the Aurora Borealis, which you can see in the green field colors.
Photo by Felix Wong
Photo by Felix Wong
I designed the light to feature the bar’s inimitable "happy bears" logo on one end and Paula’s favorite number (depicted by the “6” and the “9” pool balls) on the other.
One side features the words “Arctic Bar” and the other says, “Happy Bears.” I used exactly 1,169 pieces of glass, all of which were hand-cut and placed around a standard form. The last part of the design was adding on a copper tubing rail around the bottom to shield the glass from errant pool cues.
Octopus Window, private commission, 2'x2'
Whale Window, private commission, 18'x3.5'