I’m sure you have looked at some things and think “How do they do that?” I know I do. A lot.

Stained glass is one of those things for me. It’s an art medium I know nothing about. In fact, I don’t often think about it, until I am in a space that’s been transformed by stained glass windows. I am in awe when soaking in the prisms of colors reflected throughout a space, wanting to stay in that light for as long as I can. Have I mentioned I love sunlight? and colors and shadows? Well, I do – being around light and colors is like swimming in optimism. But beside the light and colors, my eyes and mind are always drawn to the lead came lines that had been carefully worked into the design of a piece of stained glass. Clearly, it’s an art form that requires design skills to conceive a workable design as well as engineering skills to assemble the pieces together, both are totally up my creative alley. So, I’ve always wanted to learn how stained glass is done.

A Tiffany stained glass design

Luckily for me, my adopted (long story) uncle Howard, a local award-wining stained glass artist, contacted me (out of the blue) and asked if I’d like to collaborate on a project. He knows I know nothing about stained glass, and thought it’d be a good opportunity to learn. It will be a paid project but we will be donating the money to local charities. How can I resist? A chance to learn something new with an expert? I don’t even have to buy my own tools or materials? AND doing something good for charities? I was so floored and excited and honored that of course I agreed! BAM! Two birds with one stone. I am more happy than standing in stained glass light!

The project will be for an elementary school’s library window, a horizontal panel of about 15in. high and 70in. long above the main door. I started sketching and designing right away, thinking about all the literary references I wanted to include. Uncle Howard was kind and warned me not to be so attached to my design, little does he know I survived critique sessions in art school that prepared me for a career in web design, designing for a specific audience, not me.

So, understanding the audience is critically important for us, as well as the location of panel. We have to think about the elementary school kids, who will be looking at our creation, the PTA who are paying for it and the context of the space that the panel will be living in.

Anyway, I’d like to share a couple of initial sketches.

Sketch #1 – I was really inspired by Susan Jeffers’s book All The Pretty Horses that I found in our library, dated 1974 (clearly this book is older than me! My partner Doug has an amazing collection of children’s books growing up). The illustrations are stunning, and the little girl in me was transported to a HUGE sunflower field. You see that big sunflower on the right, there? I had a little girl laying on it reading a book but she was too small and got kinda lost so I took her out.

Sketch #2 – From sketch #1 I really liked the little girl reading on the sunflower so I decided to push that concept further here. Then, I have this entire landscape to fill up with anything I wanted so I started thinking about all my favorite children’s books, from Oliver Jeffers’s Lost and Found, Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (a stunning must-read picture book) to Helen Ward’s Unwitting Wisdom, an anthology of Aesop’s Fables (fabulous illustrations too).

Sketch #3 – Since this panel is above the library’s main entrance, I thought it could be a portal, taking one’s imagination from one place to the next. This concept was inspired by The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, one of my favorite illustrated books. I was really inspired by the art on the cover as well as the architecture of the train station, an art nouveau style with lots of light and glass. This design is a bit more abstract and graphical.

 There you have them. Between the three sketches, #2 is our favorite and we think that children can easily relate from a distance. So we decided to continue to push the design and marry fantasy with dreams and professions. Revise, revise, revise (I can hear my English teacher in my head) until it’s perfect and workable as a stained glass design. I will share the final version once we get client approval, and will try to document my learning process here, so stay tuned.