Sage House Glass

Category: life

  • The Art of Writing About Art

    The Art of Writing About Art

    I started this blog in conjunction with my stained glass website for a couple of reasons. For one, I just love writing about art and stained glass. I am deeply enthusiastic about promoting artists, describing the stained glass process and ruminating on my inspirations. Writing about the intentions driving my art really helps to remind me of the “why.”

    The “why” is fundamental to art being more than just a “side hustle.” I’m often plagued with the Capricorn tendency to make sure every moment of my day is *productive.* If I’m not doing three things at once, maximizing my time, crossing things off a list–well, then I’m just not reaching my full potential, right? But now that I’m older and possibly wiser, I’m realizing how fast time is flying while I’m multi-tasking my life away. Art can be mindful. Art can help me slow down. Art doesn’t always have to be productive, a business, something to mass produce. It’s valuable on its own. The act of making is valuable.

    The act of writing about making–that’s valuable too, for me. Often I can find myself creating with abandon and focusing so much on the end result that I’m not taking the time to enjoy the process. Being mindful of my “why” can slow down the pace of what I’m doing and help me to learn more about myself in the process. Why do I favor these colors, this texture, that shape? What mood am I trying to evoke for someone else viewing the piece? What does my art remind me of, why is it comforting to me, what memory does it touch in the back of my mind?

    I’ve also learned that if something doesn’t exist on the internet that you wish existed on the internet, then maybe you’re the one that has to make it. I would love reading a weekly blog for stained glass artists rather than just endlessly scroll TikTok videos in the community. I’m much more interested in the old style of connection: message boards, chat rooms, blogrolls. I’m only 37, okay, but I do miss the golden age of the internet. Instagram and TikTok can only do so much to connect people, and it’s really just a place for most people to lurk. Don’t get me wrong, I love making reels as much as the next stained glass artist, but I miss longform content! I’m probably the only one.

    I love writing about stained glass art and how my life is growing alongside my skills. I’m holding onto my intention and making sure everything I design and create is filtered through that purpose.

  • Yoga for Stained Glass Artists

    Yoga for Stained Glass Artists

    I think most artists would agree that making, crafting, and creating is a physical act. Artists put their blood, sweat, and tears into their projects–emphasis on the “blood” for stained glass artists. Memo: glass can be sharp.

    We often put our backs into what we love, and then throw our backs out in the process. It’s easy to shrug and say it’s the cost for creating. The aches and pains in our arms, wrists, legs and necks can be a testament to a job well done: an afternoon spent on hyper-focusing, a late night fully invested in the minutiae, a few precious hours of uninterrupted creation. And then you wake up out of your fugue state and realize you’ve been in the same position for four hours with your neck in that weird tilt, your wrists locked up with overuse, and you’re screwed because you’re in your thirties and you forgot to stand up and drink water at least once an hour. Is that just me?

    I don’t feel like I’m alone in needing to physically decompress after a few hours of intense crafting, so I’m compiling a playlist of yoga stretches for the stained glass maker. There are some great resources out there for artists of all varieties, but this playlist is going to be heavy on the wrist, neck and back stretches for hours spent hunching over glass pieces, soldering away.

    Sometimes time just doesn’t exist when I’m smoothing out some juicy lines of solder on a suncatcher. Clocks don’t hold a candle to the flow state. But when that happens, god forbid I have to shelve books at the library the next day–I’ll bend down and never get back up.

    Prioritizing my health (physical and mental) has been one of the hardest things I’ve learned to do over the years. At the end of the day, it’s pretty easy to take five to ten minutes to shake out the strain and stretch the stress from my shoulders–all the stress that accumulates from making art, but also work and life and plans and all the things that build up over a lifetime of being busy. I’m discovering that the more I focus on easing that concentrated stress from my muscles, the easier it is for me to just function well.

    Dropping my stained glass artist playlist here, made on my new YouTube channel! The playlist itself is collaborative, so if you’re an artist and you have videos you’d like to include, please let me know. I’ve been doing yoga for over 20 years now, so I hope to someday start sharing my own stretch routines for stained glass artists on the channel. Thanks for following along and I hope I see you on the mat!

  • Life Updates: Art as Therapy

    Life Updates: Art as Therapy

    TW: child loss, infertility

    When I started my little stained glass business, I didn’t imagine I’d be leaving my day job anytime soon. Don’t panic– I’m still not. I love being a librarian by day (with some night shifts and weekends) and I wouldn’t want to abandon all this progress in my career. After ten years in the field, I’m in leadership and staff development. I work with a creative group of very unique people I truly consider family. I get to cultivate community and facilitate story times and programs for children, what could be better than that?

    At least, that’s what I thought before we lost our son. It’s harder these days to work with children–don’t get me wrong, I still love it, but every cooing baby and excited toddler reminds me of the struggles we’re facing in our fertility “journey.”

    After another difficult year of hoping for results naturally, we finally decided to try IVF, something I initially balked at in fear. Injections? Hormones? A thousand blood draws and doctor visits? How could we afford the time, let alone the expense, for IVF? But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I was determined to be a mom.

    We started IVF in late fall 2025. Months of poking, prodding, needles, appointments, and a non-stop rollercoaster of emotions. Along the way, I’d lost the energy to create anything at all. Stained glass took a back seat, along with almost everything else. The effort was all worth it, though–we have one healthy egg! One perfect little embryo ready for transfer. One chance, really…but at least it’s a chance.

    Making art started as a way to cope with grief and loss, but it has become a persistent metaphor for what I’m going through with IVF. All of these disparate pieces of my life are going to come together like a stained glass panel; all these harsh and broken edges will form some sort of picture, eventually. We will put ourselves back together and draw some light back into our home.

    I’m officially slowing down and smelling the roses until this transfer happens. I’m taking my sweet time when I’m designing and creating new stained glass pieces. I’m making less art, but better art. I’m enjoying what it feels like to really breathe alongside what I’m making, back to the origins of meditative creation. Because all of this? All of this is therapy. It’s all a part of the bigger picture that I’m hoping is being soldered together right now as I type this.

    • The roses in my backyard I’m sitting with this spring