Artist in Residence 2016 - St. John's Academy, Hillsdale, NJ

On May 11, 2016, I was honored to be chosen as the Artist in Residence for the annual Spring Arts Festival at St. John's Academy in Hillsdale, NJ.  This was the 9th year that mothers Lisa Maisano and Rosanne Baccaci have been organizing and presenting a week-long event which is designed to instill in the students a love for the arts.  The students look forward to it!  This year, I was chosen to give a talk to the 350 Kindergarten through Eighth grade students about the creation and appreciation of the art of stained glass.

For this special week, Mrs. Maisano and Mrs. Bacacci transformed the school gym into an homage to artists and the student's artwork. Each class was assigned to study and recreate a well-known painting or sculpture.  They then used their skills to re-create the work.  Here is "Girl With a Pearl Earring" by Jan Vermeer in the midst of the students' interpretations.

Here is the Paul Cezanne exhibit wherein students painted their versions of one of his many fruit still life paintings.  Among the many other artists represented in the gym and onstage were Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas.

This enclosed booth showed Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" under black lights.  Salt was added to the paint to create a lovely blue cast.  

 

Here's my rendition of Starry Night in stained glass, one of my earliest pieces, which I brought to show the students.  After each slide or topic, I gave the students an opportunity to ask questions, and there were many good ones.  My favorite?  "Are you famous?"  Loved that!

All of the students recognized this work immediately.  I brought it into the sunlight to show them how the colors pop in the light, which drew "ooh's" and "ahhs" from the students.  They were a wonderful, attentive audience!

Using a Power Point presentation, I walked the students through the major steps needed to create a stained glass window, from design to installation by my husband, Eric.  I taught them about the two major kinds of glass, cathedral and opalescent.  I also explained a bit about the 1,000 year history of this beautiful art, and how honored I am to be continuing this tradition.

I told the students about my passion for this art form and my commitment to quality on every repair and custom window I create.  Since these windows can last 100 years, I etch each custom window with my name and date, in hopes that the quality of my work will stand the test of time.

This was a unique opportunity to share my love of stained glass with a new generation.  I would love to see some of the students pursue this art form.  At the end of my talk, I was delighted to be presented with a bouquet of gorgeous flowers by one of the students.  Van Gogh would approve of that sunflower!

Thank you so much Lisa and Rosanne, for inviting me to be part of your Spring Arts Festival.  I loved every minute!  Keep up your good work, and best of luck to all the students!

For more information on my other projects, please click here to visit my website.

If you're on FaceBook, please click here to "like" my BoehmStained Glass Studio page to keep up with all the latest projects.  Thank you!

Stained Glass Fruit Lamp Repair #9

These large fruit lamps are wonderful nostalgia from the 1970's .. Each one is unique but in a similar style and construction.  This lamp sustained damage to four of the pears along the side, as well as cracks to the top, and two cracked pieces in the crown.  Two of the remaining pears were not damaged, but were very loose and had to be re-soldered. Here's how I went about repairing the lamp.  To see more Fruit Lamp Repairs, click here.  (There are 8 others posted)

Here's a photo showing a missing pear at left of center, and another on the left side, as well as cracks in the crown.

Another view showing two missing pears.

Here are the two crown pieces which were cracked.

And here is a top panel which is also cracked.

 Here's an opening left by a missing pear.  In order to prepare for the replacement, I have to melt off the old solder and copper foil around the entire border of the opening.

Here's the new replacement pear.  These arrive to me with rough edges.  I always run them through the grinder.  This makes them safer to handle and also enables the copper foil to adhere much better.

Now the replacement pear is in place and soldered.  Notice that I've also replaced the yellow pear on the right, using the same procedure.

Here's a pink pear which I've grinded.  I've also applied copper foil and its ready to be replaced into the lamp.

With many older lamps such as these, the original artists did not ground the edges of the glass before applying the copper foil.  Whenever I find this, I take time to hand-grind the glass with the tool shown, for the reasons mentioned above.

Here's the pink pear in its place, with new copper foil around the border, as well as around the pear.  

At this point, I've soldered in the pink pear and I'm pulling out the cracked pieces of the nearby leaf, using needle nose pliers. After I removed all the green glass, I melted off the bordering solder and foil, made a new pattern, cut a new piece of green glass, grinded it, applied copper foil, set it in place, and soldered it in place.

Now all six pears have been replaced.  Now I'm matching the glass which is in the top part of the glass.  As shown earlier, one of those pieces sustained a large side-to-side crack.

 Working now on the cracked top panel by pulling out the broken pieces.  After this is done, I pulled off, and then melted off all the old solder and foil from the borders.

I made a paper pattern of the opening, cut the new glass, grinded it, foiled it, and put it in place as shown.

And here it is soldered in place.  

Here I'm applying black patina to the solder.  Its the turquoise liquid in the cap.  It reacts instantly with the metal.

Then I'll go around the lamp and solder all the pears as shown.

After the remainder of the lamp was repaired, I moved onto the crown.  I made another template for the two pieces which needed to be replaced.  Then I traced them onto the matching glass as shown here.

Using the back of the glass cutter, I'm tapping out the two cracked pieces from the crown. I'll pull out the glass using needle nose pliers, and then remove the solder and foil from the borders.

Here are the two new pieces in the crown.  After they were in place, I soldered and patina-ed them so that they match the rest of the crown.

Here is the repaired fruit lamp ..

Another photo showing another side of the repaired lamp.  Thank you June and Fred, for taking time to travel up from South Jersey to drop off and pick up your lamp.  We hope your son will enjoy this in his home for many years, as you've enjoyed it.  All the best!

For more information on my other projects, please click here to visit my website.

If you're on FaceBook, please click here to "like" my BoehmStained Glass Studio page to keep up with all the latest projects.  Thank you!

Lamp Repair after Major Damage

This pretty lamp suffered a very hard fall which left it split, top to bottom, with a dislocated cap and at least 14 cracked piece.  But no worries .. I was able to repair it.  Here is my process ..

Here is the "before" photo.  The lamp was completely separated, top to bottom. The cracked pieces are marked with blue tape.

 After assessing the damage, I formed my action plan for repairing it.  First, I removed the existing foil and solder from the border up top where the cap belongs.  Securing the cap back on was, to my mind, the best way to stabilize the dome.

 I ringed the inside of the cap with new foil, and also added new foil to the inner border of the top of the dome.  After applying liquid flux to the foil, I soldered the cap back in place, using generous amounts of solder for a secure bond.

With the cap in place, I decided to secure the bottom edge of the lamp, then work toward the middle.  Here I've taped the lamp in place.

The bottom of the lamp had split completely, and the wire which supports the outer edge of the lamp had also separated.  I added new copper foil to the length of the border to enable me to secure new wire to that edge.  Then, working from the edge, I re-foiled and then soldered the lower glass pieces.

 At this point, the lower edge is secure, as is the top, so I'm working my way through replacing the other cracked pieces.  Note the two new glass pieces which have just been foiled, at the top near the cap. 

Here's an outside view of the dome, with those pieces soldered in place and several more pieces intentionally removed.

 Whenever a lamp sustains an "injury" such as this, the blow will invariably damage neighboring pieces of glass.  This was the case here.  The piece to the right of the glass cutter is clearly cracked.  But the piece to the left also sustained a crack.  Therefore I'm in the process of removing it. I do this by "scoring" the glass in a hashtag pattern, then tapping on it firmly until the glass cracks.  Then I remove the pieces using needle-nose pliers.

 

Now that piece has been replaced. I've moving on to the piece across from it, also cracked.  I'm careful not to replace too many pieces at once.  If the support system is compromised, the entire lamp could collapse.  Here I'm pulling old solder and foil off of the neighboring piece of glass.  In this way, I'm preparing a fresh surface for which the new piece may adhere. 

 Now that piece has been replaced.  You can clearly see the silver areas which I've just worked on.  These are the borders of replaced pieces.  I still have several more to do.

The view from the inside of the lamp dome.  I'm taping pieces in place and continuing with replacing the cracked pieces.

  

  More pieces have been replaced.  Now I'm tracing a piece of the purple glass which forms the outside rose petal.

Here I've cut a new piece of glass and I'm trying it out for size.  In many cases, even when a pattern is accurate, glass may be too small or too large for the space.  In that case, I need to make adjustments.  This piece will fine fine.

View from inside the dome.  The piece shown is now in place.

Here's another piece I'm fitting in to the lamp.

Now I'm coming back to the border, where I've taped down a length of wire the same gauge as the original.  This wire will be fluxed and then soldered onto the edge as shown, on top of the copper foil.  This lends a great deal of strength and stability to the dome, and will help prevent future damage to the repaired areas.

In the course of doing repairs, as mentioned earlier, pieces which appeared to be fine also receive damage.  This was the case here.

And another crack appeared adjacent to the one I was working on.  I'd rather see them now, while I'm working, than later.  So both the prior piece and this one were replaced.  I had plenty of glass on hand to do the repairs.

 One done, one to go.

Here are some of this lamp's pattern pieces.  They say "out" as a tip to me to be sure that I cut the glass on the correct side to match the rest of the lamp.

After all of the cracked pieces are replaced, I'm soldering them, starting from the inside of the dome.

 After the outside is soldered, I clean the flux off the inside and outside using a product called "Kwik Clean Flux and Patina Remover."  Then I use a metal acid brush, as shown, to apply patina to the silver solder.  It reacts instantly, turning the solder black.  After it sets for a while, I clean it again.

And after the lamp receives another cleaning, I apply "stained glass finishing compound" which is a light wax.  This protects the patina and shines up the glass.  And here's the repaired lamp!

The repaired view, from inside the dome ..

 Thank you, Lindita, for entrusting your friend's lamp to me!  I hope she was as impressed with the repairs as you were.  All the best!

For more information on my other projects, please click here to visit my website.

If you're on FaceBook, please click here to "like" my BoehmStained Glass Studio page to keep up with all the latest projects.  Thank you!