Joe's Stained Glass Blog

What Would You Do - Conclusion

2010-09-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Under this title in a previous post I posed the question of whether or not it was ethical to reproduce one of your own pieces that you'd previously sold as one-of-a-kind. I read the responses and partly because of the them I went ahead and re-did the piece. I matched it pretty closely but I couldn't get the exact Rondel from Blenko glass that I'd used in the original:
http://www.homestudioartglass.com/images/2_rivers.jpg
(That company is so strange. I mean Blenko not Home Studio. Well, maybe we're a little strange too.) But I did manage to put together a piece that was nearly identical and when the check arrived I sent it off. It was purchased as a birthday present for an executive director at the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.

Well a few weeks later they sent me an e-mail and said they'd found something else for this coworker's birthday and would I take the piece back and refund their money. I did. I just thought I'd let you know how it turned out. Sooner or later you see everything.

j

Can You Pick And Choose?

2010-06-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

A while back I had a potential customer offer me a commission to do a piece that I had absolutely no interest in doing. I've done them before, these 'match my sofa' commissions, and I've always gritted my teeth, held my nose, made the piece, collected my fee and moved on. But there was something about this one that just hurt my head.

It wasn't obscene, satanic or blasphemous (now THAT would have been interesting! ha.), it was just mundane in the extreme. I knew it would just suck the life out of me.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking; how pretentious, who does this guy think he is? Well, I'm nearly 65 and I've been doing this for over 30 years and I'm tired in a lot of ways. Physically, standing bent over a work table all day hurts and at the end of the day it's hard to walk. But even more, I've lost a lot of the enthusiasm I had as a young man. The thrill of making something beautiful out of nothing but your imagination and getting someone to not only agree that it is beautiful but to pay you for it could keep me going through some truly difficult jobs.

Or maybe it's that I'm not doing art shows anymore. In the past they always charged my batteries. Meeting the public and doing a little selling was energizing, plus I'd come home with lots of ideas and plenty of validation. But art shows are for younger folks.

So I blew him off. Actually, I handed him off to another shop. But in so doing I made a promise to myself to do interesting work whenever possible. How I'm going to accomplish this I don't know but it's got to be art or I'm just a hooker and in it only for the money.

j

So, what do you do?

2010-04-16T13:02:00.001-07:00

Do you make one-of-a-kind stained glass pieces? Unique original works of art? Or do you think of your work as generic and decorative? And what exactly is the difference?

I have always wondered about the "signed and numbered" phenomenon. Painters and photographers do this as a way of getting good prices for what are essentially copies of their work. It's an understood contract between buyer and seller that there are a set and limited number of copies and therefore each is worth more than just the cost of production plus profit; they have value as a "semi-unique" art work. But it's still a copy. So I've always thought there was something not quite right about that whole enterprise but I'm not exactly sure what it is.

Several years ago I decided that I was no longer an artisan but an artist. I naively thought that what this meant was I would do only signed, one-of-a-kind pieces and I advertised them as such on the website. I eventually sold them, not on our site but at art shows where I did not claim any one-of-a-kind status for them. But I kept the photos up on the web as examples of my work.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by someone who wanted one of the pieces on the web-page and I told her it had been sold. She asked me to make another one. Now, to be frank, this was our first possible commission in quite some time, so I agreed to draw up another pattern - I had thrown the original away - and recreate the piece. I felt that since the original buyer received no promise that I would never make a copy, I'm within my rights to do so. Or am I?

So...what would/do you do? Would you tell them that it's impossible, you can't recreate an original? Or do you consider every piece unique and one-of-a-kind in it's own way?

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

"Go Back To The Drawing Board?"

2010-03-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

I may have created the impression that we're getting out of the business (Business? What business?) in my last post and that's definitely not the case. And like David said there seems to be a slight warming trend lately, at least the phone is ringing (I was getting ready to call the phone company and see if they'd cut it off.)

I was talking awhile back about designing with Photoshop and it's progeny like PhotoDeluxe, Photoshop Elements, Limited etc. Here you can take pics of your glass and "cut them out" on the computer and put them in your design to get a real accurate picture of what the finished product will look like, and eliminate that "what was I thinking" moment that occurs sometimes when you first see the light come through your piece. But what I was really excited about was that you could send the prospective client a virtual photo of what their window would look like before you scored the first piece of glass.

I always found it amazing that a client would agree to turn loose of some large bills on the basis of a colored pencil sketch. Now I'm pretty good with a pencil and can come up with some real pretty sketches but still it always seemed like I was saying "use your imagination and give me 1500 dollars and I'll put this in your home"

So the Photoshop stuff seemed to be the perfect tool for approaching design possibilities with the client.

But here's the thing; I never lost a customer when I was handing them the finished pencil sketch. Once it got to that stage I had them. When I started doing computer design I began to loose some. Not many, but enough to make me wonder. Maybe it's coincidence. Or maybe it's just that our prices are higher now. But could it be that the customer likes to see the work of the hand rather than the microchip; to know that you're an artist first and a crafter second. I still do the Photoshop thing but I make sure my customer sees something I've sketched whenever possible.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

My, How Times Have Changed

2009-09-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't put anything down in awhile, but it seems to me that my stained glass business is in a much different place than when I first started this blog. Back then I was talking about being 'covered up' and now it's as if someone threw a switch about a year ago and turned off my business. I've had a few small jobs that make me keep the doors open but really, It's never been this dry in over 20 years.

I'm sure it's because Stained Glass is so dependent on the housing market and of course that's collapsed completely. And also when it's time to cut back on expenses well, who really needs the stuff I make anyway.

And that has always been the source of a certain amount of ambivalence on my part. As a carpenter I always knew that I was providing a necessary service. It's a noble profession, hell, Jesus was a carpenter. But no one in the bible, or anywhere else in literature as far as I can tell, was a Stained Glass artisan.

Of course I'm an artist, but I've never had that consuming artistic fire, that "I would die for my art!" attitude. It's always been something I enjoyed doing and was good at but I never felt I had anything to "say" in art.

And Stained Glass artisans, with a few - very few actually - notable exceptions, are decorative artists at best. We decorate homes. We are often charged with reproducing a beloved scene, or a quilt pattern, or perhaps a family pet. We are constantly being constrained to match the carpet or the sofa or the bedspread for God's sake. The first time I was given free rein to design a transom to suit the home owner's personality, I was so intoxicated with the prospect that I was frozen into immobility for a time. OK, I know this only happens to us in the lower ranks; Narcissus Quagliata probably never gets the "Oh and I love peach, could you put some peach in it?" rap.

But really this feeling that what I was producing was essentially landfill was at it's peak during art festival season. Now, we never did a lot of art shows 4 or maybe 5 a year at the most. But the stuff we had to crank out just depressed the hell out of me. In order to hit those price points below $30 we had to produce simple designs with few pieces that could be cranked out like an assembly line. I was always trying to reduce the number of cuts, usually degrading the design in order to keep pieces affordable. We never really got into the little suction cup sun catchers but still...

Well now our situation has changed dramatically; we're much more financially secure and no longer do the art show circuit - thank God - and I'm looking to find a way to only do jobs that interest me. (not sure exactly how to go about that, can I just sniff and tell a client "So sorry, old chum, but this project bores me?") We have a few pieces in the Kentucky Artisan's Center in Berea and when - and if - the bug to produce items on spec hits I'll look to galleries to sell my work.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Stained Glass In The Bath?

2006-12-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Does it sound silly, putting a gorgeous Stained Glass window in the bathroom where so few people will be able to see it? It's certainly not the first room that comes to mind when you're thinking about a decorative window is it? But homes are getting bigger, and bigger homes have bigger windows and a window in the bath presents a privacy issue. You want the natural light but you don't want people being able to see in.

There are several window treatments that can solve the problem but many people are finding the most attractive one is Stained Glass. You can see some of the windows we have installed at: http//www.homestudioartglass.com/res and scroll down to Stained Glass in the Bath.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Custom Stained Glass II

2006-07-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Odering a window

Generally, when asked to do a custom piece, I like to visit the site where the window will be installed. In this way I can get a feel for the style of the home and see how the client's tastes run. Occasionally, I'll pick up a design idea from a piece of the architecture or some of the furnishings.

I'll also see how much light will be coming through and whether it is direct or indirect sunlight. Many people prefer cathedral glass (see the following paragraph) because it lets in more light and doesn't look as "heavy" as opalescent glass. But in direct sunlight, the color of cathedral can look washed out as if it has faded.

Opalescent or Cathedral?

The term "Stained Glass" originally referred to the silver stain fired onto the back of a piece of glass which gave it a color anywhere from deep amber to bright yellow. Now, however, it refers to any decorative colored glass assembled with lead or copper foil as well as to the sheets of colored glass themselves.

There are 2 basic kinds of colored sheet (stained) glass; Cathedral and Opalescent. Cathedral glass is glass that you can see through. The amount of the diffusion of the light can vary from completely obscure - where you can only perceive light and shadow, to glass that looks like clear glass with color. And while a lot of cathedral glass will appear to have no particular color without light coming through it, like when viewed from outside during the day, opalescent glass will show a color with or without transmitted light.

All of these factors must be taken into consideration when planning a Stained Glass window.

see also: http://www.homestudioartglass.com/your_window.htm

Custom Stained Glass I

2006-07-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

It would be so nice to deal with clients on a regular basis for whom money is no oblect, to have a customer who says "just build me a gorgeous window". But usually, one of the first things a customer wants to know is "how much will it cost?". Often this question is asked before the design has been chosen.

There are so many factors that affect the price that it's impossible to say exactly what a window will cost until the design has been finalized and all the materials chosen. This is because;

The cost of glass varies wildly. For example; the cost of a sheet of hand blown flashed glass can be 10 times that of a machine rolled sheet.
Doing a window in lead is more difficult than copper foil and takes longer.
Special order items like custom beveling, faceted jewels or special came will be an extra cost.

But the biggest single factor is the number of pieces. Obviously the more pieces the more work. Our final pricing formula combines the number of pieces plus the square footage.

Still the client needs to have an idea of the price to know if he/she can afford it. And we need to know before we spend a lot of time designing a window that the customer will be able to afford it.

So we've come up with a ballpark figure of $75/ sq. ft. Admittedly, this is on the low side and would represent a fairly simple piece. We want to do every thing we can to get a window into a clients home. We've looked around and feel this is as low a price as you're going to find in the industry.

We put a cost calculator on our website at http://www.homestudioartglass.com/your_window.htm

You just plug in your window's measurements and the java script will calculate an estimated price.

Designing with Bevels III

2006-06-22T06:31:00.000-07:00

So I find a picture of a rural scene since this home is out in the country (actually, if I'd been smart, I would have taken a picture through the window and the homeowner could have a very realistic idea of what the window would look like, if I'd been smart) and I make it a layer. I've made my drawing another layer on top of it.

I'll start with the border. Since the upper facet reflects what's below, I'll place the target of the Clone Tool on a section of the scene below the bevel (A above). Then I'll place cursor where the upper facet would be (B above) and click and drag to the right. The target will move in a corresponnding manner. This effectively "paint's" what the target is moving over into the area covered by the cursor.
You can hold the shift button down while dragging to get a straight horizontal, verrtical or 45 degree angle line. Another way; you can click and then hold the shift button down. Still holding the shift button move the cursor to the other end of where you want to "paint" and then click. The image gets wiped in nice and straight. This is useful where you want a straight line but it's on an angle.

Well, like I said, I'm using a poor man's version of Photoshop but I'd bet it has a similar feature.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Designing with Bevels II

2006-06-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

The drawing above illustrates what I was saying; the upper facet bends the light coming from below, while the lower facet bends the light coming from above. Almost as if they were angled mirrors. The program I use, Adobe PhotoDeluxe® is a poor man's Photoshop. It has something they call a "clone" tool. You place the target on a part of the picture you want to copy. Then you put your cursor on the spot where you want the copied image, click and drag and it will "paint" whatever the target is moving over into the area you're covering with your cursor.

More Later
j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Designing with bevels

2006-06-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

I've always had a problem when designing beveled glass, how to show the client what it's going to look like.

I would draw it up and use colored pencils to try to give some idea but my artwork never quite captured the beauty of the glass and I always wound up basically asking the client to use his imagination. And it's hard to ask someone to hand you what is sometimes a fairly large sum based on a image in their imagination.

Well, I don't know what other software might get the job done more easily but I use a program called Photo Deluxe along with Photoshop Ltd. That's how I made the image here.

When a piece of beveled glass is installed with the beveled side towards you, the flat surface will, of course be just like any other piece of clear glass, i.e. you'll see what directly in front of you. The upper surface will reflect what below it and the lower surface will reflect what is above it. Likewise the vertical surfaces will reflect accordingly.

More later.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Covered Up

2006-06-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's a common expression here in South Central Kentucky, when you've got more work than you can handle you're "covered up".

And they say that God invented time so that everything wouldn't happen at once.

And just a few weeks ago I was whining 'cause things were so slow! We even started doing repairs! I hate repairs. Now we have so many irons in the fire I feel guilty spending this time on the blog.

Be careful what you wish for. Heh heh heh

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Blenko Glass

2006-06-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

We went to Blenko Glass in Milton W.Va. on Monday. I think they're one of the last American companies still blowing sheet glass. It's amazing the way they do it. They blow a bubble of glass that they form into a cylinder with either iron or wooden tools. They cut off the ends and score the open cylinder down the side and put it in a kiln where it opens to form a flat sheet of glass.

Usually, they use iron shaping tools to form the glass into a cylinder but they had 2 sheets of red that they'd used the wood shapers on and they were incredible! Looking at this glass you can really see it's true nature. Glass is a super cooled silicious liquid. In other words, a liquid that has become solid without having a freezing point.

Blenko is a very strange company. If you want to buy their sheet glass you have to order from them or go to their factory, they don't go through a distributor. But if you go, set a limit to how much you're going to spend, cause you'll be like a kid in a candy store; "I want this and this and this..." and first thing you know, you're way over budget.

I'll talk more about the nature of glass later, but check out Blenko glass at www.blenkoglass.com

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Re: What Have We Been Working On?

2006-06-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

Re-reading that post I think it could be assumed that we are really depressed about losing several art shows and that's not the case at all. Granted, we - especially me, I don't deal with disappointment well - were very down for several days, but what I wanted to get across was that we are now much more energized and enthusiastic about our work.

I saw on a TV show - it's terrible when most of your information comes from TV isn't it? - that the Chinese symbol for crisis is actually 2 symbols, one being the symbol for danger, and the other being the symbol for opportunity. I don't know if it's true or not, it doesn't even matter, I like the idea of it. And I think it's true that some of our best work comes under times of stress and crisis.

So I just want to correct any impression that we're all down in the dumps with bleak thoughts and bad feelings. Life is good!

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

Fish On a Stick

2006-06-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we came up with a new item. It's a free standing fish on a stick. It has a wood base and it rotates. You can see it at http://www.homestudioartglass.com/images/fishies.jpg. We're going to try to get this item juried into the Kentucky Crafts Market.

I'm also finishing a church repair. We had a real bad hailstorm a few weeks back and it damaged a lot of windows. Even buildings with storm windows had quite a bit of damage. But this poor church didn't have any protective glazing and the 2 windows on the windward side of the building got really hammered. They had to be completely dismantled and rebuilt. I hope to get them installed by the end of the week.

http://www.homestudioartglass.com

What Have We Been Working On?

2006-06-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

What have we been working on?

Well, we lost 2 of our shows (almost lost a third) this year. It focuses the mind you might say. I hope to say at that it was the best thing that ever happened to us but that would be premature at this point. It definitely makes you take a long hard look at your work and where you want to go. There's no doubt when you do the same shows year after year and you get to know what sells and what doesn't, that you become complacent. We've re-evaluated our work and added some new stuff that I hope to have on the website soon.

The thing is that you don't get any reason why you were rejected from most of these shows. all they'll say is "there were a limited number of booths available and the competition was strong". It's difficult in this business to really get any constructive criticism from qualified people. So we decided to try to enter the Kentucky Crafts Marketing Program, http://kycraft.ky.gov/

The program was started back in the 70s to get the work of Kentucky's craftspeople to a larger audience. The idea being to introduce artists and craftspeople to the owners of galleries and shops all over the country to whom they could wholesale their work.

We were in it either the first or second year, I forget, but the entire wholesale thing really threw us; you have to either cut your retail price in half to the shop owners or double it to the retail customer. We felt we had gotten our price as low as it would go for our retail buyers. And in our business, it takes just as long to make a particular piece if we're making 12 as if we're making 1. Mostly we want the feed-back. So we're going to Frankfort for their jury session on Monday.
Hey, if anyone wants to comment on our stuff and tell us what's right or wrong with it, feel free. http://www.homestudioartglass.com

St James Court Art Show

2006-06-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

Well, we just got our acceptance letter from the St James Court Art Show, http://www.stjamescourtartshow.com/ This will be the 21st year we've done the show.

"The St. James Court Art Show is a juried fine arts and fine crafts show produced by a consortium of five non-profit neighborhood associations: Belgravia Court, South Third Street, 1300 South Third Street, St. James Court and South Fourth Street; and the West End Baptist Church. Always held the first full weekend of October, it hosts an impressive 650 plus artists from all over the Americas. Held in the heart of historic Old Louisville among the country's largest collection of Victorian homes, the St. James Court Art Show has for over four decades provided our neighborhood, city and state with a rich cultural and artistic legacy" -quote.

For the first 10 years, we were on Belgravia Court. Then there was this big shake up and we moved to 4th Street. After 2 years we moved to 3rd Street and now, this year we're back on 4th.

We only do about 3 or 4 shows a year but they are all high quality shows with excellent work being displayed. Each of our shows require you to be juried in, in other words, you have to submit your work for acceptance. Back when we were only making a few hundred dollars per show, it was no big deal - other than the blow to your ego - to be rejected. Now that we make a significant portion of our income doing them, it's pretty nerve wracking to go through the jury process and not know from one year to the next where your money will be coming from.

But this is a very impressive show, both from an artist's and an audience's perspective. The quality of work here is amazing. But be prepared to walk. And walk. And walk.

So I hope to see you there.

j

http://www.homestudioartglass.com