Fall 2021 Stained Glass Workshops

Hurrah! We are beginning to lift our Covid-19 restrictions in Vermont. So if you’ve been waiting to take a design or glasspainting workshop with me you may. At last!

Hands-on, in-person, 5-day stained glass workshops will start September 20th 2021.

Right before the pandemic I created a new curriculum, a series of three stand-alone 5-day workshops. Maximum 6 people per workshop. Suitable for all skill levels with plenty of one-on-one tuition and playful group exercises to counteract any self-doubt or artistic insecurity.

Here’s the schedule. Workshops begin on September 20th 2021 with an introduction to glasspainting workshop followed by a stained glass design workshop and an advanced glasspainting workshop. Those who want to learn glasspainting and design in a single trip to Vermont may sign up for two or three adjacent workshops.  More information here.

Instruction includes Powerpoint presentations, technical demonstration, hands-on group exercises and individual projects. I teach practical skills and repeatable, step-by-step processes that are difficult to learn online or figure out on your own. You can learn how to mix slow-drying glasspaints to optimum viscosity for hand-writing, simple printmaking, wet scraffito and elegant, fluid brushwork; how to paint faux textures like stone, wood, feathers and fabric; and how to design a painted stained glass window from your own reference material.

Tuition costs $860 for each 5-day workshop and includes lunch and materials. Go to coombscriddle.com for a schedule, workshop descriptions, and general information on location, hours, scholarships, accommodations and more.  If you have questions, shoot me an email. Prefer to chat? Email me your mobile number and we’ll use text to schedule a phone call.

Why do I teach stained glass? In the midst of a glasspainting demo I gave in my last workshop one student said, I just learned more in 5 minutes that I did in 3 years of trying to figure it out on my own! Read this post about craftsmanship. Tip: there are some things that just cannot be learned from YouTube! Having said that, you may indeed watch videos of my beautifully responsive glasspainting mixture in action or read the story of my proprietary glasspainting recipe to get an idea. And if you’re wondering what it’s like here in Vermont, where workshops take place, watch the 11-minute video of me painting a stained glass window in my studio.

Lastly, if you’re curious about what drives me as an artist, listen to this interview about my life’s work in stained glass and how I transitioned to the mathematical work I’ve been doing in recent years. My resume in 57-minutes!  Many thanks to interviewer Shawn Waggonner. She really got me to open up!

The stained glass easel; why?

In the process of making stained glass there are two stages where the glass is easeled up against the daylight. First, when selecting glass, then later, when glasspainting. Easeling glass is time-consuming and thus expensive, so why do this?

Here’s my current work for All Saints Chapel at Carroll College in Helena Montana. Note how the opalescent glasses change at night/dusk. This is an effect that can only be estimated, whether on light table or easel, because my north-facing easel does not precisely mimic the light in Montana. The easel does, however, take out a lot of the guesswork.

 

 

Check a few older posts if you want to find out more about how and why glass is fixed to the easel, and watch the embedded video links. Stage one, selecting glass for colour, transparency/opacity and texture the English way, by fixing it to the clear glass easel plate with Plasticene; about choosing colour for a landscape window with figures; using beeswax and rosin (which fires off later in the kiln) in the process of  waxing up (fixing painted, fired  glass onto the easel for further layers of glasspaint); and details of a specific wet-matte technique that may be achieved with my https://coombscriddle.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/spreading-the-word-worldwide/proprietory propylene glycol mixture.

2016 workshops

This year, I am offering week-long design and glasspainting workshops in June; 3-hour Saturday Afternoon Intensives; and a 10 week series of evening classes beginning March 10th. All at my studio in Vermont. Here’s the schedule. Application deadlines for American Glass Guild and Stained Glass Associate of America scholarships are Feb 28th and April 13th respectively.

 

In Praise of Morton

Impeccably cut glass tiles. All precisely the same size. Clean, perpendicular edges. No shelling, flares or ragged grozing. Much is handmade antique glass, including Lamberts, Blenko and some ancient English Hartley Wood streakies. Some is almost 1/4″ thick, yet the craftsmanship is exemplary and, believe it or not, cut by complete beginners – mostly without using a grinder. All thanks to the wonderful Morton glass cutting system.

I have been teaching Stained Glass Tiling at Williams College in Massachusetts every day  throughout January. Here’s the glasscutting in progress, plus some of the geometric constructions done during the first week of the course.

Students had to use a straight-edge and compass only (no rulers, protractors or computer printouts) to draw precise, accurate polygons that would nest together to form a tiling without gaps. Along the way, they figured out how to set stops and cutting bars on their Morton surface and cut multiple identical copies of the same shape.

Today, students finished copperfoiling and soldering, and started to frame their panels. Every tiles was painted and fired. More  pictures soon!

Even better, if you’re nearby, do come and see their work for real, on display in the science building at Williams College. We will be holding a reception from 1pm – 2.30pm this coming Thursday, Jan 28th, on the third floor corridor between the Physics building and the Chemistry building, above the Eco Cafe. Enter through the cafe from the Science Quad and look for signs.

 

..more geometry

This is the center top panel, the Nativity star.

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Geometry: beautiful and fiddly

Stained glass tracery at the top of my window for Trinity Episcopal, Branford CT. Assembling the painted glass into a matrix of lead channels. Soon to be installed, the window will be dedicated on November 30th.

Assembly of stained glass window for Trinity Episcopal Church Branford, Connecticut

Last of the roses…

…to be glazed (leaded-up) and the last of the six figurative panels too. Such an enormous amount of work and so rewarding to see the window finally coming together.

Notice the five panels on the easel beyond. I love the way they look at night, showing the pattern of the leads.

Still working… into the night!