These are creative retreats for beginners and artists in any media, not just stained glass lovers. Here are photos from the retreat I hosted here at my studio in November 2022.
I have a few places still available in my 5-day residential Intro to Glasspainting workshops beginning April 24 and May 8. No experience needed. Only 4 students per workshop.
I taught glasspainting to glass scientists from Corning and elsewhere as part of the United Nations International Year of Glass initiative. It was such a good experience all round, for both artists and scientists.
Please share this message with anyone who might be interested. They can find out more by clicking the Workshops tab on the navigation bar at coombscriddle.com Everything is online, including a video of the accommodations and links to scholarships. Tuition is $860 for the 5-day workshop.
I am building my legacy in stained glass. Why? Because I can imagine a future where artists in all media—including glassblowers, ceramicists, and mosaic and stained glass makers—will be able to paint easily onto any vitreous surface that may be kiln-fired. I imagine artists worldwide, including those without privilege, glasspainting with ease and fluency, inexpensively and joyfully, without technical restraint or frustration. So I am working to place my teaching methods undiluted into the hands of those who will continue to share them generously.
Please join us for a stained glass painting evening on Sept 29th 2022 in support of my legacy project.
We will make you dinner with home-baked bread, beef chili, vegetarian chili, cakes and pastries. Come and meet artists, friends, stained glass folks and my first stained glass legacyrecipient Luis Gianera.
Talk to my students, see their work. I’ll be teaching a workshop that week, 9/26-9/30. I’ll also be teaching a glasspainting workshop the week before, 9/19-9/23. Both are Intro level and open to all and spaces are still available for last-minute signups.
Everyone is welcome to try out my proprietary glasspainting recipe during Open Studio. We’ll have glass and pre-mixed paint ready for you. Those who donate to my GoFundMe legacy can have have their glasspainting kiln-fired and shipped to them. Luis and I will pre-paint glass to giveaway. I also have stained glass books and materials to share.
Where? My studio and our home is at 359 Rue Madeline, Readsboro, Vermont 05350. Click link and scroll down this page for location and How to Get Here. Questions? Call or text me at 413-652-7819. Or call Richard at 413 652 5952. He’ll be here too, with stories to tell about his summer at Salem Arts.
Please Share this invitation to anyone who cares about the future of stained glass skills and craftsmanship.
Please RSVP via email
You can play a part in helping artists and glasspainters worldwide, of all economic means, learn easy and joyful methods of painting kiln-fired glass by donating to my fundraiser and supporting my stained glass legacy.
I’ve just been invited to teach two stained glass workshops at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, USA at the Annual Conference of the American Glass Guild. I’ll be teaching a day-long glasspainting workshop on July 8th 2022. On July 9th, I will be one of three presenters in a ‘design circuit’ with the brilliant, and stylistically very different stained glass artists, Tim Carey and Petri Anderson. This is exciting news indeed, with an international team of presenters that include stained glass luminaries such as Judith Schaechter, Tom Denny and Narcissus Quagliata.
I’m looking forward to meeting up with old friends, gloating over the success of past students (including some who will be speaking or leading workshops), and meeting newcomers to the stained glass community. The American Glass Guild have generously provided financial support to many of my past students, and this past week two more people received 100% tuition scholarships for Spring 2022 workshops. On Monday my first group of 2022 students will arrive in Vermont, and on April 25th-29th I will repeat this 5-day beginner glasspainting workshop with a new cohort. There’s still one spot available so please pass the word along if you know of someone who might be interested. Accommodation is available. Open to all skill levels.
September 19-30, 2022 I will teach my first 12-day STAINED GLASS MASTERCLASS. This intensive, structured course of study covers step-by-step methods for creating original work in stained glass. I teach via a combination of Powerpoint presentations, demonstrations, group and individual assignments and coach each of the four students toward discovering their own unique style of glass artistry by designing, making an accurate cutline, cutting and painting a panel of their own. This is a great workshop for those who find design a challenge, or want to learn more about color selection, or using the stained glass easel, or wet matting, portraiture and other advanced glasspainting skills.
glass painted during with propylene glycol during an intro workshop by student Chris
The pandemic seems to be settling down at last. Hallelujah! This makes springtime seem especially joyous, with workshops and opportunities for everyone, and I’m inviting stained glass makers and glasspainters to reconnect.
Come to Vermont to take a workshop. Checkout our beautiful accommodation. Watch this old faithful about why I love stained glass. And come to the AGG conference too! Corning is a marvelous place for glass lovers. Here’s a quick tour tour to whet your appetite. I hope to see you there!
The workshop began with slides: How do paintings get transformed into stained glass windows? How does the painting on the left (below) by John LaFarge become the stained glass window on the right?
Dawn Comes On The Edge Of Night. Painting and stained glass by John LaFarge 1903
We looked at the work of John LaFarge (above), Fernand Leger, David Hockney, Marc Chagall, Kehinde Wiley and others. These artists have all translated their work into stained glass, breaking a painting into separate pieces of color separated by black lines. Each tried not to lose the spirit, style, energy of their original painting. We reviewed slides with an eye for line, specifically tracelines (the first stage of glasspainting) and cutlines, the pattern of lead/solder used to assemble separate pieces of glass into a single picture. On Monday afternoon students examined photographs of existing stained glass windows in a variety of styles and traced over (or guessed) where the leadlines were.
Tuesday’s Powerpoint covered the major visual components of stained glass. Besides line, stained glass generally includes color, the manipulation of opacity/transparency through glasspainting, and tone/value/chiaroscuro – the balance of light areas and dark areas. In stained glass these range from the brilliance of sunlight to the blackness of lead. We listed them on the chalkboard, noting especially the different stages, or layers of glasspainting.
In the afternoon students arranged square tiles of glass into a smooth tonal sequence. There are tricks to help perceive value more accurately, including photographing in grayscale. Value is a powerful driver of composition, especially in stained glass.
We also discussed a design for a stained glass window by Michael Oatman. I’d translated Michael’s collage of 1950’s magazine illustrations into a window for a space satellite made from a repurposed Airstream trailer, part of his installation at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). Students got to see the cutline and photographs of the design (below left) and work-in-progress before visiting the window itself in situ, 20 minutes away at MASS MoCA.
It was a busy week, with hands-on drawing exercises and more slide presentations. By Friday students had designed their own stained glass panels. Three students cut their panels over the weekend and are staying on to paint them during this week’s Advanced Glass Painting workshop. Here’s a photo taken on Saturday of Mary Hartwig’s glasscutting in progress.
‘Design scares me’ was one person’s response to my recent email about workshops. And this is precisely why I teach it! I want to de-mystify the process and make designing stained glass easier for everyone, scared or otherwise, beginners and professionals.
a finished, leaded panel
bare-naked glass (no paint yet)
composite with bare-naked glass showing through
cutline
cartoon
It takes considerable time and effort to make a stained glass window, so the trial-and-error method (make, review, learn, make another… ) is a slow way to learn. It’s quicker and easier to make progress as a stained glass artist when you have a design procedure to follow. You can expand your skills, experiment in a controlled manner, and take your work to another level. You can also broaden your overall art-making skills within the particular context of stained glass. What you learn in a design workshop is transferable to other media, like painting or quilting, and sometimes relevant for other commissioned art projects.
Each 75 min lesson in a 5-day workshop covers a single topic. In Stained Glass Design 101 topics include color & chiaroscuro; transparency & opacity; tracing (solid black lines or areas of glasspaint); and decoration & texture. Topics in the advanced Stained Glass Design 102 workshop include learning how to take measurements on site, make a scale design; and present ideas to clients.
I generally introduce new topics in a workshop with Powerpoint presentations followed by practical hands-on exercises. In Stained Glass Design 101 for example, the topic of opacity & transparency begins with a 20 minute review of historic and contemporary stained glass that incorporates opalescent glasses. Then we arrange hundreds of squares of different colors, types and textures of glass on the light table. Working as a group, we create a transparency-opacity gradient scale. Next we place our gradient scale up against natural light to observe it in different lighting conditions.
Another Stained Glass Design 101 topic is graphic analysis, where I teach how to break an image down into three stages for glasspainting: trace, decoration & texture, and matte. This is an interpretative process, with no right or wrong solutions. Students practice mark-making for tracelines with non-traditional tools as well as brushes and dip-pens. There is often a tool or technique that feels ‘right’ for someone. This topic is spread over three 75 minute classes, with plenty of time to experiment and absorb, then discuss as a group. These design workshops are great for those who say they ‘cannot draw’ because most exercises involve tracing over existing images. Exercises are often quick and playful. I ward off ‘workshop performance anxiety’ by giving each person different reference material and tools, so you cannot easily compare your work to your neighbor’s. My goal as facilitator is to help you figure out what your own personal style of stained glass might be, and how to make it in your own studio when you get back home after a workshop.
Feel free to email me questions or we can talk on the phone. Send me your mobile phone number via the Contact page on my website and we will use text to schedule a chat. Beginning November 2021 inexpensive accommodation within walking distance will be available for all Vermont workshops. Scholarships are available.
Kiln loaded with glass painted by students on the first day of this week’s workshop in Vermont
Here’s a kiln-load of student work painted on the first day of this week’s intro to glasspainting workshop.
Trace & texture: an Introduction to Glasspainting with Propylene Glycol is a hands-on, in-person, 5-day workshop in Vermont on painting and kiln-firing stained glass using my proprietary recipe, tools and techniques. It is the first in a series of three consecutive workshops. The second is a rigorously structured 5-day Stained Glass Design workshop. The third and last in the series of 5-day workshops is Advanced Glasspainting where students paint and fire a panel of their own design. Instruction flows seamlessly from one workshop to the next over a three-week period. Students often sign up for two or three consecutive workshops. Extended hours and optional open studio time at weekends is available.
I’ll be teaching this 5-day workshop twice again this year, on Sept 30th 2021 and Oct 25th 2021. Here’s a schedule. Move quickly if you’re planning to apply for a tuition scholarship from the American Glass Guild. The deadline is Aug 28th, a week from tomorrow. Find out here about the AGG James C Whitney scholarships and apply online. US and non-US residents are eligible. Both the American Glass Guild and the Stained Glass Association of America have generously provided financial aid since 2007. Support them if you can. It’s important to teach these traditional skills, and I’m one of just a handful of artists who offer stained glass painting and design workshops in the US.
The workshop series beginning Sept 30th is fully enrolled. The workshop series beginning Oct 25th 2021 is still open for registration. Class size is limited to 4 students due to the pandemic. Places fill quickly. You must be fully vaccinated to attend. Accommodation within walking distance is available Oct 24 – Nov 13, 2021. Private room. Huge beautiful kitchen, lounge, deck and bathrooms shared with workshop cohort. Inexpensive.
During the first 17 minutes of this week’s introductory glasspainting workshop students learned how to sign their name and trace images with a dip-pen.
If you’re interested in taking a workshop with me there’s still plenty of time to apply for a scholarship from the American Glass Guild. Their deadline is August 30th 2021. You will need to select a workshop (with me or another stained glass instructor) as part of your application. Those who have already signed up for one of my September 2021 workshops are eligible to apply. International applicants are also welcome. Here’s my schedule of Fall 2021 stained glass workshops for beginners, stained glass professionals and artists in any media who might wish to attend. And here’s the direct link to an online application for the American Glass Guild’s James C. Whitney scholarships for 2021.
It was once feared that stained glass would become ‘a lost art’ but the tide has turned in recent years. Thank goodness! Younger artists are taking an interest, many with the support of two US organizations that work tirelessly to keep stained glass alive and thriving.
The Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA) is a vital community of stained glass artists, artisans and aficionados of stained glass. The American Glass Guild (AGG) is a nationwide group of equally dedicated independent artists and professionals. Both organizations encourage and promote the creation of new work and the conservation of stained glass. Both have also, for 13 years now, generously supported my workshops with tuition scholarships. Please support them if you can.
coombs criddle stained glass 