Having Fun In Spite Of The Heat

Jeanne taught three students this morning while I re-did some postcards for the "First Fridays Downtown Provo Gallery Stroll." The guy who was going to design it, said he didn't have time this month when Jeanne called him to get them. So I volunteered. I told her that after the third edit of the card, "This just proves the old adage, No good deed goes unpunished."

We went and picked up a 4 x 8 sheet of Styrofoam for packing future stained glass shipments and we got a 4 x 8 sheet of drywall to use to build a glass panel on. Our grandsons, Nik and Drew carried the Styrofoam out by themselves, exclaiming how light it was.."I can carry this with one hand."

Then I was able to cut out an entire mandala that Jeanne had laid out. I had to cut 8 pieces with the saw in order to keep from breaking them. The picture I uploaded is the table with the pattern and a pile of cut pieces ready to grind and get fit in place.

The Artistic Path

Lately we've had many new projects come our way. There are some that pay (which is good) and many that are either built as consignment items or pieces that are for trade or for us. This puts a strain on the budget, but allows us greater freedom artistically.

We finished one of the angel panels for our home and began the second one. It's fun and challenging and will be a great addition to our December show at the Covey Center, but it takes up space needed for other projects.

Lynde Mott has given us a rebuild to do, it's a little funky, she wondered if we could leave the holes left by broken pieces and just make the window stronger. We came to a compromise, where we replace the four or five badly broken pieces with clear textured glass. The idea is to show care for the window, but to leave it's imperfections.

Connie at The Finer Designer had us measure some of her windows at home and we gave her some designs. She liked the simple design for her 6 bathroom panels, and she loved the more formal windows. So we get to build them, there's a trade involved, but the sandblasted elements will be a challenge and should be beautiful.

And Alicia has approved her design for a panel in the large square transom area over her front door. It'll take a while since many of the pieces in this panel will be fused glass.

It's fun, exciting and rewarding. We can focus on good art and creativity, instead of chasing jobs for a couple of weeks. (I've heard that summer time is slow in the business, if this is slow, I'm going to have to learn to work harder and faster!

Copper Foil Is The Best

Recently I got in a running discussion about the merits of the copper foil method. A reader saw that we had taken apart a leaded window, redesigned it and rebuilt it using the copper foil method.

"Why would you do that when leading is so much more versatile and strong?"

I was dumbfounded. You can see more pictures of the rebuilt window and the condition of the lead at rebuild.htm

It really was a sight. Just terrible condition.

I've discussed how superior the copper foil method is in articles before. The article at typeandquality.htm covers the subject very well, but in this running discussion (argument) that I had, I pointed out something that wasn't in that article which has been read and republished thousands of times.

Lead came deteriorates and crumbles and loses it integrity in as little as ten years and certainly within a hundred years unless encased in between glass. Copper foil doesn't because it isn't lead alone, but a mixture of tin and lead which is much stronger and stands up to the elements. Lamps and windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany sell from $30,000 to millions. But you don't see that price being commanded from lead came windows because they deteriorate so badly.

Her comment about lead came being more versatile is wrong in my opinion, this can be debated by others, but since it's my article, I say it's wrong. How many times have I seen lead came windows by really good artists that have a copper foil section in the panel because they need more detail in an area.

The only reason one would ever choose to use lead came is that it is faster to build, since only joints must be soldered, or that they were trying to achieve a certain perfection in laying out beveled diamonds in a French style window.