A Look Back At My Stained Glass Art

I’m working on the last piece of stained glass I will ever make. Of course I’ve said that before and somehow someone always has a compelling reason to get me to say yes to just one more, in spite of the fact that I’ve said so many times, “This is the last one.” I should know to never say never. I spent about thirteen years as owner of Lumiere Glasswork Studio, Inc. in Ithaca, New York. I’ve built hundreds of windows and lamps for all kinds of installations, many of which I would love to have owned myself. But they were for wonderful clients who appreciated me, allowed me great freedom to design for them, and usually paid me well for what they received. I have kept a few pieces for myself over the years. Mostly very early pieces. Samples. Small stuff. A few lamps. I still have two of the first pieces I ever made when I was taking a beginner’s class in Rochester.

But glass became a passion for me. I had always wanted to do blown glass, hot glass. But couldn’t afford the studio or the furnaces. So flat glass, stained and leaded glass, was a good alternative. It seemed to be a natural off shoot to all my interests; photography, architecture, drafting, drawing, designing, art, color, light. They all came together with glass. There are parts of the process I dearly love. The design work, choosing and cutting the perfect piece for each element in the pattern. Just looking at glass and handling glass. This I love and would still do. But then there are parts I don’t care for as much. The caulking, the brushing down, the cleaning, the installing. These parts I can live without.

But I’ve noticed, as I’ve written in this blog and posted other pictures of my glasswork, that a lot of the referral hits I get are from people searching for stained glass sites. So I thought, if this really is my last piece of glass, then I would do a short retrospective look at some of my favorite pieces.

I’ve worked in many styles of glass. Contemporary, pictorial, abstract, Victorian. It has all depended on what the client wanted. The piece I’m working on now is for my father-in-law’s house in Florida. This will be the fourth piece for his house. The first was a Victorian I built for him when he was still in Connecticut, but it moved with him and became the first piece in the Florida house.

I love this piece. It’s one of my favorites. Jeweled Victorian windows were always a favorite of mine and I tried to learn to replicate the style in the best of tradition. I did several others as well for other clients. They are usually built of opalescent glass that is more opaque, often textured with ripples or surface textures, mottled colors, and holds the light within the glass.

This one was built for a house on the coast of Long Island at Montauk. The center motif is the waves breaking on the beach at night and the colors were drawn from the colors of the ocean and shells and sand.

This is one of a matched pair done for an Ithaca house. It’s the same house that has the grape arbor windows on a stairway that appeared in an earlier post about windows.

This is probably my favorite jeweled Victorian window of any I have made. A local restaurant owner lived in a large Italianate house outside of Ithaca. His daughter came home one day, kicked her shoes off in the kitchen, and sent one of them right through the etched cranberry glass pane in his back door. He hired me to make a replacement piece, and this was what I built for him. I love this piece for its delicacy, its transitions of color, its texture and its elegance.

Entry windows seem to provide a splendid opportunity for stained glass. Side lites, transoms, doors.

This transom window was done for a downtown Ithaca store.

This entryway set was made for a very good friend who has turned a simple lake house into a showplace over the last twenty-five years. The exterior of the front door is now done in bronze in a relief pattern that echoes the glass design.

This entry was done for a decorator’s home in the Binghamton area. The theme was beech trees and the way the leaves hang in the trees all winter. But instead of leaves, I substituted beveled glass that would sparkle and refract the light and feel very elegant.

And this again is one of my favorites. Based on a photo I took in the Catskills, it’s the wind through autumn trees.

This set of doors was built for a couple of wonderful friends at Cornell whose life and love is insects. My work for them started with a narrow side lite that you can see in the background outside the entry way. But eventually led to these doors and about ten lamps. Almost everything had an insect or nature theme.

Other nature and landscape themes have appeared in my glass designs over the years. Birds seem to be a regular request or adapt well to glass design.

This flamingo window was done for a bathroom and was a fun piece.

Parrots are great stained glass subjects (you’ll see them again) and this large transom in a family room added great color to the room. I love tropical themes because they create opportunity for wonderful colors.

Birds appear again in this series of about ten transom windows that all had a morning glory trellis with each panel containing a different animal. Several birds, squirrel, lizard, butterfly, etc. Flowers are the subject of many of my designs as well. Probably more often even than birds.

These iris panels are installed in an interior wall to separate an entry foyer from the dining room, but become equally visible from both sides and allow the extra passage of ambient light. They can be quite dramatic at night as well.

Nature on a grand scale is part of this window for a bathroom in Chenango Bridge, NY. The bathroom had a southwest theme with native American prints on the wall. The floor was done in a salmon marble tile. So the window design is totally southwest. The border is a native American mosaic motif with the salmon pink repeated. The center circle is an abstract of a photo I took in Arches National Park in Utah. I can’t imagine how it must feel to soak in this tub and look at this piece of glass.

I did several other pieces for this house, including this piece for the stairway. They also own the autumn trees triptych I showed earlier.

I love contemporary designs. Abstract, graphic pieces that allow any direction in the design process.

These windows were done as a wedding gift for two very dear friends. They were symbolic of their move from Massachusetts to Florida, with small representations of each state appearing in the upper left and lower right of the windows.

This window is not in a church, but in the stairway of a very contemporary house in Vestal, NY.

This set of windows was done for the foyer of a contemporary new home of a good friend that I often played racquetball with. I took the arch shape of the top and expanded on the theme to create an abstract of color and line.

This pair of windows was commissioned for the dedication of Emerson Hall on the Ithaca College campus.

In addition to windows I have made numerous lamps in the Tiffany tradition.

I originally built this lamp for myself. The flowers were done from a beautiful dichroic glass that was a deep magenta by reflected light and changed to a beautiful blue by transmitted light. This hung in my dining room for a few years, then I sold it to some good friends for their dining room when I moved out of the apartment.

This was the first lamp I made for my friends that have the insect doors. The theme was insects born from the water. The red signifies the peril they must survive to fly away and live out their lives as airborne insects.

Another lamp for the same house with parrots and tropical flowers. The base was custom made of cherry wood to look like bamboo.

This was the only lamp I made for their house without insects or animals.

This lamp was commissioned as a Christmas gift from a gentleman to his wife. They were originally from Weisbaden, Germany where there is a beautiful forest that they used to visit. The lamp is a depiction of that special place.

Then occasionally I was asked to make a special gift for a person by family members or close friends. These often result in little jewels that turn out better than expected. I was particularly fond of this piece.

This was a small panel done for a Methodist minister who was retiring from his parish at a small church in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

Though I may be retiring from glass as an artist. I say “may” because I can never say never. I will always have a deep love for this art and feel a great sense of pride about all the pieces I have designed and created for so many wonderful clients and friends. I hope other glass artists will find these images and be inspired to create beauty of their own with glass. Until you have lived day to day with a piece of stained glass and seen how they change constantly with the light of the day and changing seasons, you never really appreciate fully how beautiful they can be.

All images and glass designs are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

Bikes…

It’s time to get the bikes out of the storage building.

Warm weather is back (although the high here yesterday was only 59) and when the sun shines, I enjoy a good bike ride. I especially enjoy riding when we go to Florida and we always take the bikes with us.

I had a mountain bike for a while. A Schwinn Pioneer. One of the last bikes made by Schwinn before the company name was sold and the brand became just another cheap bike found at Walmart and Toys R Us. But it was heavy and a stout ride and I wanted something more refined, since at my age, I don’t tend to do a lot of off road riding.

I had bought my daughter a Fuji Crosstown hybrid bike and liked it so much, I traded in the Schwinn for one for myself. Good move. I love the bike. The smaller tires and bigger wheels, more comfortable seat and handlebars, grip shifters, and lighter weight make it a great bike for casual in town and highway trips.

My very first bike was a Christmas gift, a total surprise. It was a red and white Columbia with chrome fenders. I believe I was about 9 years old. I had taught myself to ride on my brother and sister’s bikes so knew what I was doing. But when we walked in on Christmas morning and my step-father was holding up a bed spread hiding the bike, then dropped it to reveal this gorgeous beauty, I gasped and proclaimed “Is it for ME?” It was one of my best Christmases ever. I rode that bike everywhere. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear the tires right off it.

We did all the typical things with bikes back then. Like clipping playing cards on the frame with clothes pins to rub the spokes and sound like a motorcycle. Racing down steep hills, riding with no hands, zooming in and hitting the brakes to skid around sideways and leave marks on the sidewalk. We were Hell’s Angels on unmotorized pedal craft. Those were more innocent days. I never locked that bike. Never had to. It was perfectly fine to ride my bike to downtown Decatur, Georgia, and park it on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s without fear of having it stolen while inside.

I learned basic mechanics on that bike, doing all the maintenance and repairs myself. It had no gears, no hand brakes, nothing complicated or elaborate. A simple red and white and chrome bike with coaster brakes, and it was my joy and my freedom for about five years of my life.

There’s something about riding a bike that’s quiet and thought provoking. You can think clearly when riding a bike. You’re outside, feeling the breeze across your face and the sun on your back. You can smell the landscape and hear the birds. You can travel quickly or casually and see everything that’s there. It takes far less concentration than driving, and is liberating and wonderful exercise.

Over a long period of time I’ve photographed bikes. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s their style, their geometry and design, the way they look against a building or in the landscape, what they suggest, transportation at a stand still, simpler than an auto, self-propelled. Maybe it’s nostalgia. I’m not sure. I’m just attracted to them. So they’ve become one of my many series of photos, an on going project. And when I see one calling to me, I stop and photograph it.

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

A Mother’s Day Gift

It’s Mother’s Day and I have a surprise for my wife. I spent about three months earlier this year going through photos of my daughter and our family in order to make a book for my wife for Mother’s Day. I scanned over a hundred negatives and chose all my favorite pictures of my daughter and her Mom and some other family members from the first seven years of my daughter’s growing up (she’s almost 16 now). But as she’s gotten older, she’s been less willing to pose for pictures and more absent with her busy social life so she’s at home less. So these were the richer years for images and I’m so glad I documented them as well as I did.

I wanted to share here just a portion of the images that went into the book and also to say to my wife, thank you for being such a great mother to this girl. What you have been willing to sacrifice for her, always wrapped in love and deep, deep caring, and the example you have been and values you have instilled in her have made her a beautiful, spectacular, and wonderful human being. She is loved and admired by so many, and is a strong, elegant, caring young woman now. Thank you for all you do and all you give.

Coming home day.

Sleeping child.

Baby doll.

Hard at work.

Mother and daughter.

Our girl.

In the pool.

Feeding the deer.

Feeding Mom.

At the playground.

Dancer.

Gymnast.

Four generations.

Watching TV.

Playing dress-up.

On the phone with Grandma.

Way cool!

Two broken arms.

My favorite clown.

 

Whale watch.

 

First day of school.

 

 

 

The Shortest Journey

The sweetest moments to recall,
stay locked within our minds…
those moments with our children,
(by far the sweetest kind)

To see our children learning
and growing more each day…
these moments are so precious
and too soon they slip away.

We hold the memories tightly
and time does not impair…
the bond between a mother
and the children in her care.

It seems before we know it,
we blink and they are grown…
from childhood to adulthood;
the shortest journey ever known.

—© Jill Lemming

Happy Mother’s Day.

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

Coming Into The Light – Installment 2

Here’s a continuation of photos and quotes from my book, Coming Into The Light / An Invitation. Others have been posted earlier under other subjects without the quotes, but you get the idea. Enjoy.

“Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making of room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a virgin mould, which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Into every empty corner, into all forgotten things and nooks, Nature struggles to pour life, pouring life into the death, life into life itself.” – Henry Beston

“They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! How they are mixed up, all species, -oak and maple and chestnut and birch! They are about to add a leaf’s breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay. Nature is not cluttered with them. She is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all.” – Henry David Thoreau

“I walk over the hills, to compare great things with small, as through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon looking through a gap in the wood, as through the frame of a picture, to a more distant wood or hillside, painted with several more coats of air…” – Henry David Thoreau

“A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It has new life and motion. It is intermediate between land and sky. On land, only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see the breeze dash across it in streaks and flakes of light. It is somewhat singular that we should look down on the surface of water. We shall look down on the surface of air next, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it…” – Henry David Thoreau

“Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.” – Wordsworth

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

Coming Into The Light – Installment 1

I co-published a book of landscape and nature photography in 1979 entitled Coming Into The Light / An Invitation. The book was chosen as one of the top 100 pieces of printed material in the country and won a Distinctive Merit Award from the Art Directors Club of Boston, so I admit that I am very proud of it. It has been out of print for sometime so is not available anywhere any longer, so I thought I would post some entries from the book here. It began with this introduction.

The Invitation

“Like the wind, a brook exists only through motion. Down the narrow groove it has worn in the earth, hurrying toward the greater valleys of the rivers that will carry it to the sea, all the dark water foaming and gurgling below me rushes away into the night. The stream flows on and on. So the long life of the ever-renewing brook extends through the years. But it continues without awareness, without sensation, without emotion. Its existence is one of action, of music, of beauty; but it is life without life. The great gift of our lives is the gift of awareness.”

-Edwin Way Teale

The purpose of the book was to invite the reader to experience the beauty of nature that was easily accessible and all around. The photographs were taken in parks, and refuges, at roadsides, and in my back yard. They were accompanied by quotes that helped to deliver the message. So enjoy these. There will be more next week.

“Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature – daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it – rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?” – Henry David Thoreau

 

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain.” -Henry David Thoreau

 

“Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain.” -Henry David Thoreau

 

“God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.” – Rabandranath Tagore

 

 

“…Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.” -Henry David Thoreau

“You must converse much with the field and woods, if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body” -Henry David Thoreau

“You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.” -Henry David Thoreau

 

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.