Spring 2023 Intro to Glasspainting workshops

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.

Last week’s workshop: Intro to Stained Glass Design

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.

Scholarship deadline August 28th; new series of workshops begin Oct 25th 2021

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 28^th, 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 30^th is fully enrolled. The workshop series beginning Oct 25^th 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.

For latest schedule, individual workshop descriptions, or to learn more about my techniques go here and follow the links. Be sure to read my general information about location, hours, etc. If you still have questions email me debora@coombscriddle.com. Photo below, this week’s workshop in progress.

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.

Scholarships available for my September 2021 workshops

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.

Donate to the American Guild Guild

Donate to the Stained Glass Association of America

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  glasspainting workshop in progress

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  design workshop

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  glasspainting workshop in progress

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  Karen Deets with the panel she designed, cut and painted during workshops

If you have questions please send me a message via my website. I spend long days in my studio and often forget all about my social media.

You may also explore my blog for hundreds of photos and articles about stained glass; watch short video clips of me glasspainting and discussing stained glass design; enjoy a 13 minute video of my entire process and learn more about me by listening to this 56 minute interview with Shawn Waggonner from her podcast Talking Our Your Glass.

Carroll College: Go Saints!

Go Saints!

Selecting and cutting glass

Painting borders

Making tray copies of the cutlines

Firing border pieces: one kiln-load

Showing my stained glass in two exhibitions that open tomorrow, Sat May 21

Ornithologist

WILLIAMSTOWN MASSACHUSETTS

My stained glass panel Ornithologist is hanging in The Shops at the Library Antiques in Williamstown as part of  IS-183, the Art School of the Berkshires  25 year celebration Faculty Art Show. This delightfully unconventional exhibition takes place in various non-traditional gallery spaces up and down Spring Street in Williamstown Massachusetts.

Artwork by more than 75 artists from across our region will be on show until  June 16. Maps will be provided at the opening reception on Saturday, May 21, from 4-6pm, at the Purple Pub. After that, visitors may pop into any participating venue, pick up a map and take a self-guided walking tour.

MANCHESTER VERMONT

And… as a new member of the Vermont Glass Guild I am showing six of my stained glass panels alongside the work of 30 other Vermont and New England glass artists at the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, Vermont. All are from my seven-year long, 14-piece series Menfolk that explores the emotional landscape of men over time and in different circumstances. Included in the exhibition is Sir Edmund Hillary (below, detail). This was the subject of a lovely 13min video made by our son, Jack Criddle that documents my process, showing how each separate piece of glass is cut, painted, fired and assembled.

There will be an opening reception for “Modern Alchemy – The Art of Glass” in the Wilson Museum and Galleries at the Southern Vermont Art Center, in Manchester, VT on Friday, May 21, from 5 – 7pm. I’ll be there to greet visitors and get to know my fellow glass artists. The show will run through July 10, 2016.

 

 

Why teach craftsmanship?

Because some things just can’t be learned from YouTube.

Richard and I were reminded of this last week as we wrestled with self-leveling cement for a bathroom floor. We have 15 years of art school education between us, and a broad range of practical skills. Richard has been MASS MoCA‘s Director of Fabrication and Art Installation since the museum opened in 1999, and responsible for building hundreds of extraordinary works of art in a wide variety of materials. But this tiny, 5ft x 8ft bathroom floor was threatening to get the better of us.

We’d watched the videos, pored over instructions, and measured everything precisely, but this darn cement turned out to have a mind of it’s own. Plus, a fierce surface tension that made it cure into pahoehoe-like slabs with lightning speed. Self-clumping would be a better description, like kitty litter. Figuring out how to level this lava-like eruption forced me to become more intimate than usual with the subtle topography of our bathroom floor. Eventually, we sort-of won, and the floor was sort-of leveled.

Battle-weary, as we cleaned our tools and tidied my studio for a week of glasspainting, it hit me: I teach in order to save others from this same experience: the demoralizing frustration that results from such a huge gap between what you want or expect, and what the mixture or material appears able to do.

Just a few days earlier, Annie O’Brien had come from Cornwall in England for private tuition. She had heard about my methods, downloaded my Notes for Students and painted glass with my mixture, but had yet to achieve the results she saw in my videos. Annie teaches stained glass at Penzance School of Art and, besides developing her own work, wanted to help her students paint glass more fluently.

Reviewing Annie’s workshop in the light of my floor-leveling struggles prompted me to recall comments such as “Oh, I read about that in so-and-so’s book but it didn’t/I couldn’t/it wasn’t clear…”. Then, as I took Annie through my basic procedures, I began to hear “Oh, this is so different than I’ve been getting… “. Or, as she learned to recognize the correct consistency and viscosity “This is way easier, and so much more fun.”

And this is my point: all the YouTube videos out there cannot substitute for a few hours of hands-on time with the right person.

And so, last week, four more artists drove across the country to take a 5-day workshop, Glasspainting For Artists, in my studio. Marianne Parr from Athens, Georgia, was working on developing a free and more personal style of glass painting and figuring out where she wants to go as an artist. Daniel White of Cain White Art Glass, Virginia came to learn how to create more expressive tracing and textural effects for commissioned work. Carol Slovikosky, who has taken several design and painting workshops with me, was expanding her figurative work to include canine portraits, and Brenda Benson came to the workshop to learn how to add pattern to her sculptural pieces.

I always aim to teach the individual, and this is easier with small groups. As I figure out each artist’s needs and goals I can be flexible with the curriculum, address specific requests, and encourage exploration. Last week I gave slide presentations that included aspects of stained glass design, including the positioning of support bars, which spurred a spontaneous session I dubbed “Sacred Geometry 101”. Then, since both Brenda and Daniel wanted to use my mixture for figurative work, they chose to paint faces during the workshop. Brenda, whose tuition fees were covered largely by the SGAA’s MalDeb Fund, went on to figure out the precise viscosity of paint needed to print hand-carved linoleum.

My next student, LeaAnn Cogswell, is an accomplished sculptor and painter who has yet to figure out how to use glasspaint as beautifully as she does clay. She has remarkable drawing skills, masses of experience and solid art training. The Stained Glass Association of America awarded LeaAnn a Dorothy L. Maddy Scholarship to come and study with me. With a few days of one-to-one, hands-on instruction, I’m confident that LeaAnn will swiftly become an excellent glass painter.