Sage House Glass

Tag: life

  • June Commissions & Happy Pride!

    June Commissions & Happy Pride!

    I absolutely love the way that summer announces itself in a wash of rainbows.

    My first commission for June is a perfect Pride coincidence. My sister and I were working at a market back in March when the patron “C” and their partner approached my booth. They loved the sunshine arch panels I was selling, but gave me the best feedback in the world: “Where’s the purple in your rainbow arches? If there was purple in there, that would be Pride. I would’ve bought them in a snap.” It was a brilliant critique–I hadn’t even realized my sunshine panels didn’t include a crucial color of the rainbow–violet. As a supporter of the alphabet mafia, but not a card carrying member, feedback like that was so helpful.

    C reached out to me on Instagram to commission a pair of sunshine arch panels with all the colors of the pride flag. We went through several iterations where the sun was drawn with a half smile, but realized it was too busy. The simple lines of the original sunshine arch paid homage to the textured glass, so we kept it clean.

    After a few weeks of conversation, and a delayed start from me–life can really get in the way of art, right?–the rainbow panels are polished and ready to head home with C. Here comes the sun, just in time for Summer storms. Below are a few more images of the set before I wrap them up for the journey.

    As June winds down, I’ll be adding several pieces to a storefront in Asheboro, North Carolina, called Minkology. I’ve been working to create a Summer-inspired collection for the storefront, all butterflies and flowers in pastels. I’m very eager to do a write up about that process, so more to come about that. I’m so excited to one day walk down the street and see a piece of mine hanging in the windows of a store–that’s truly the dream!

    I’m also looking forward to July commissions–I’ll be designing some new pieces and working outside my comfort zone with new soldering techniques. I’m working on a pair of Romantasy-inspired bookends for a patron’s birthday. I’ll possibly be repairing a sentimental set of glass pieces for another lovely person I met at a market. More to come on those commissions! And if you’re interested in a commission from me, please reach out via the website or my Instagram and we’ll get it on the books.

    Happy Pride, everyone! And happy summer break, to those who have kids out of school. As a children’s librarian by day, this is our busy season, so please be kind to your local librarians–we’re in the trenches!

  • Recreating Home: The Emotional Power of Stained Glass Art

    Recreating Home: The Emotional Power of Stained Glass Art

    My earliest memory of being enamored with stained glass comes from my childhood home in California. The house was owned by my paternal grandfather, built in 1959, and the front door had a stained glass panel of a bird flying through cattails in an ocean sunset scene. The light would carry the rippling sunset hues down the entryway and across the hall.

    My family and I lived there during my formative years, from early grade school through junior high. I can reconstruct the living room from memory. I have a vivid nostalgic recollection of sitting on the extremely brown couch (all furniture was extremely brown in the 1990’s) and watching the colorful refraction from the stained glass window as it moved across the carpet. I loved watching light move as a child. It’s a largely known fact that our generation had the best kid’s television, but watching light dance was a pretty popular pastime for me. It seems like no matter what era we grow up in, times will always be “simpler then” in regards to our collective upbringing.

    I’m not sure I’d be able to recreate the stained glass panel itself from memory, but when I think of home, that’s always the first image that floats to the surface. Dancing motes traversing beams of faded orange light. It evokes that comfortable feeling of “home” that’s so elusive as we grow older and move from place to place.

    Due to deeply regrettable circumstances, we moved out of that house in the early 2000’s when I was in high school and my grandfather chose to sell it. My family still lived in the area so it was easy to drive down the street from time to time and track the incessant “flips” that seemed common for that neighborhood. I moved to North Carolina in 2015 but whenever I’m back in town visiting family in SoCal I’ll take a tour of the area and it always leaves me with that specific heart ache.

    From a cursory glance on Zillow today, the house is still various shades of beige. They removed the lemon tree from the front yard, for some unimaginable reason. When we lived there, neighbors had free rein to pick lemons from the tree whenever they wanted to prevent an abundant crop from going to waste. I’d like to believe the flippers removed the tree because it was old and rotten instead of the more likely scenario that sharing free food with the community wasn’t in fashion. The gorgeous climbing hibiscus bushes are also suspiciously missing, but there’s no accounting for taste. The front door was removed long ago, replaced by a more modern silhouette you might find at any Lowe’s hardware. I’m not the first person to complain about the atrocities of snuffing out beautiful unique fixtures in older homes, but I can’t imagine what I would pay for a door like that today. Like all ephemeral things, it’s a priceless memory now.

    There are so many places that will only live on in our memories. Someday I might have the ability to recreate that stained glass panel from old pictures if I can find them, but I’m not in any hurry to try. What I’m able to achieve with the stained glass pieces I’m currently designing— it’s bringing that same feeling from my memories to life all around me. My home is filled with that same light, diffused through colorful glass, dancing along the floor and the walls, alive and ever-changing as the sun moves across the sky. The feeling of “home” comes back to me with every piece of glass art I hang in the windows here.

    It’s the same feeling I’m hoping to bring others with my stained glass art. I’m still that stereotypical artist that’s flattered beyond human comprehension that anyone might want something I’ve made, but more than that, I’m honored by the opportunity to bring light to someone’s memories through my art. What a cosmically amazing thing. So thank you to anyone who has ever purchased a piece from me, big or small—it’s truly an honor.

    And please, with love and kindness, if you have a stained glass panel in your door, keep it.

  • The Mother conundrum

    The Mother conundrum

    TW: child loss.

    As I become more comfortable flexing into my grief and stretching out into this space, I want to share all the ways that my art is informed by my loss. Certainly, art is healing. Art is a companion in grief. Creating glass art has been a balm to my anxiety. But art can’t protect us from the endless onslaught of holidays.

    Here is the heart of it all: I am a mother, but I am not a mother.

    There are a lot of ways I’m technically a mother. I was pregnant, I carried my baby for six months. My husband and I announced him, celebrated him, planned for his future, until a routine scan discovered anomalies. After weeks of testing, the doctors told us the birth defects were not compatible with life. There wasn’t much we could do besides say goodbye. So our parenting journey ended in termination for medical reasons, a term I’ve grown to understand means I’m part of a very sad club of mourning parents dealing with complicated grief.

    Am I a mother? I gave birth, in a way. We planted a tree in honor of my son and we’ve watched the tree grow while he’s been gone, just over a year now. He is present in our story, if not in our daily lives. We yearn for another chance at parenthood. But does that make me a mother?

    A lot of platitudes on the internet would testify that I am a mother. Friends who’ve experienced loss, they tell me I am a mother. Well-meaning family members wish me a Happy Mother’s Day, because I’ll always be a mother to a heavenly baby, an angel baby. People tell me I’m a mother– if I feel like I’m a mother.

    But I don’t feel like a mother. I’ve just begun my second year of grief and I’m discovering how much worse year two is from year one. The shock has worn off and now the emptiness in my arms is heavy, sinking me down into myself. Every “Happy Mother’s Day” message stirs a new emotion, but they’re all negative: annoyance, anger, bitterness, hostility, tears. I can know intellectually that they all mean well, they’re my support team, but that doesn’t mean my emotions correlate.

    I don’t feel like a mother. I desperately want to feel like a mother, someday.

    I booked a weekend trip away with my husband, knowing this Mother’s Day weekend would be tough. We went to the mountains and toured in Blowing Rock, NC. Our view from the AirBnb was of Grandfather Mountain, the most serene expanse of rolling green. We visited The Martin House, my favorite art gallery. I coincidentally came across an oil landscape by Christine Code, a Canadian painter living in the Midwest, called Cracking Light. The pale sliver of sunlight peaking out from underneath the heavy lavender-grey clouds struck a chord with me, and I burst like a dam in the middle of the gallery. It felt good to release some of the emotion that stays trapped in my chest.

    I think the whole point of writing about the intersection of my grief process and my art process is to let out some of this trapped emotion. If it helps even one person to give themselves grace, or to seek opportunities to create as a form of healing, I’ll feel like I’ve done something supportive with all this emotion.