Project manager’s report – FINAL Statistics

by Robert

It’s almost a year since my preliminary statistics calculations, so now that I’m tying up loose ends, here’s the finalized numbers to the best of my knowledge. These stats include the front and side walls of the vestibule, but not all of the cabinetry panels, because I’m tired of counting things.

Total Stained Glass Panels: 65

Total Area of Stained Glass Panels: 197 square feet

Total number of Glass Pieces: 4,191 (3,415 front/776 side)

Front Wall Stained Glass Panels: 47

Side Wall Stained Glass Panels: 18

Panel Dimensions:  20” square (visible glass), 20 7/8” square (exterior of zinc)

Width of Stained Glass Overall 37 feet (26 front/11 side)

Columns with Stained Glass: 20 (14 front/6 side)

Front Wall overall dimensions: 36 feet

Number of –

Butterflies: 9 (1 in caterpillar and 1 in chrysalis stage)

Flowers: 54

Ferns: 3

Magpies: 2

Barley/Wheat(s?): 17

Oak Leaves: 9

Acorns: 5

Honeycombs: 116

Thistles: 3

Honey Bees: 2

Kittens: 0

Stars: 38

Drips: 19

Embossed Makers Marks: 5

Depression Glass Plates: 25

Buntings: 10

Makers Mark bottle Shapes: 3

Book Reviews!

My book, Kicking Glass, will hit the shelves on May 24th, and it has received its first reviews! Here’s one at foreward.com. It’s hard to believe that I turned in the manuscript just about a year ago, and now people are finally getting to see the final product. I received my own advance copy, and I’m so happy with the how great the many, many photos look in print. If the review piques your interest, I’m taking pre-orders for the book here!

Margie’s Portrait and Pewter

The interior of the atrium is really coming together, with the installation of lots more unique, hand-crafted artwork.

Kentucky artist Honora Jacob created this amazing portrait of Margie Samuels to hang over the hearth in the atrium.  I love how both the colors and themes blend into the other elements of the room. 

Additionally, the pewter has been placed in the cabinetry.  It’s a spectacular collection (click the video below to see the whole display).

I hope Margie would love being immersed in all of the beauty of this room! 

(thanks to Leah Frankl for the photos!)


 


 


 

Interior Elements

Work continues at Makers Mark. The room will house and display Margie’s beautiful pewter collection in handcrafted display cabinets, which will also display more of my stained glass in their side panels.  (BTW, Margie came up with the name “Makers Mark” to emphasize the hand crafted nature of their bourbon… a maker’s mark is the symbol that a craftsperson stamps into their pewter pieces.)

(thanks to Leah Frankl for the photos!)

 

 

All Work and No Play? No Way!

Exhale… look around... glass is all installed!!! Time to explore!

With my project all in place, I had the opportunity to tour the grounds of Star Hill Farm and see some of the many changes that have happened since my first visit here over two years ago.  The new Private Selection Tasting Room is beautiful, as are the impromptu tasting areas found all over the grounds.  We saw two Bald Eagles flying around the lake up top.  Also had a great visit with Kentucky glass artist Colleen @wildlight.glassworks. On the road home, we were tempted by another of our favorite distilleries, Woodford Reserve.  It amazes me how each distillery is so unique, yet each pays such attention to honoring both the quality of the product and the history of the craft.  Now back home to relax!

 

Delivery To Star Hill Farm

Well, we’ve arrived safely at Star Hill Farm with all of the glass carefully crated up for the voyage.  It was 877 miles of somewhat stressful driving for Robert, though the weather was great and we didn’t hit any snow up in those West Virginia mountain passes.  I did see him flinch every time he spotted a surprise pothole… and he almost lost his mind as google maps took us the final 9 miles on a winding single lane (but two-way) back road complete with wildlife (and dogs) that weren’t eager to get out of the way of oncoming traffic.  The worst moment, though, was the overnight at a Holiday Inn outside of Morgantown.  I had to convince Rob not to sleep overnight in the van with all the glass, so we searched for a hotel with a very safe looking parking lot.  We wound up high up on a hill, backed into a brightly lit parking spot complete with cliffs on two sides, with a clear view of the hotel’s front desk.  Even so, Rob locked up the steering wheel with this huge chain that he brought, just in case.

 

All Packed Up

We have the go-ahead to transport all of the stained glass panels to Kentucky.  It’s amazing to watch all of the moving pieces in a project this large, especially in such uncertain times as these, as we deal with production delays caused not only by COVID restrictions but also by shipping delays resulting from cargo ships stuck sidewise in canals!  We, however are ready to ship… everything is packed up in 12 custom crates that have been patiently taking up space in my studio.  Not looking forward to lugging these up our narrow cellar steps...

 

Back in the Workshop

Quick post today, as I’m immersed in getting my hands back onto glass.  All those rainy days last week helped to keep me focused on cutting up patterns and glass, and today I’ve got the studio door open to this beautiful day as I do some soldering (while listening to episode two of the “Cracked with Chevonne” podcast).

Podcast and Progress

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A few weeks ago I sat down to chat with the wonderful Chevonne Ariss, aka @runaglassworks , to talk about all things stained glass for her brand new podcast “Cracked with Chevonne Ariss”. Today is premier day and I am so excited. We discussed in detail the Makers project, the book, and the cabin. You can listen at Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for Cracked (and please subscribe, rate and review so that it's a hit and she keeps making more, because we need an awesome stained glass podcast for the studio! )  So many thanks to Chevonne for the invitation and the great conversation and for making the whole experience fun and easy.

 

Grid for the side wall based on 1/3 scale revisions (from inside)

Back in the studio, I’ve finished up my final revision of the full scale drawings for the side wall of the Makers Project.  Now my hand drawn patterns will be scanned and reprinted for use as patterns.  Then I’ll launch into glass selection and cutting for columns 15, 16, and 17 next week.

Earlier 1/3 scale side wall sketch hanging in my dining room

Project manager’s report – Statistics

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by Robert

Now that I’ve counted and measured the different parts of this project a thousand times, and then quickly forgotten the numbers when asked a question, here’s the rough tally.  I say rough because a) some numbers are estimates, and b) YOU try counting the number of glass pieces in ONE panel and get back to me about how accurate you think you are!

Total Stained Glass Panels: 65

Total Area of Stained Glass Panels: 197 square feet

Total number of Glass Pieces in Front Wall: 2,118

Front Wall Stained Glass Panels: 47

Side Wall Stained Glass Panels: 18 (projected)

Panel Dimensions:  20” square (visible glass), 20 7/8” square (exterior of zinc)

Width of Stained Glass Overall (Front Wall): 26 feet

Columns with Stained Glass (Front Wall): 14

Front Wall overall dimensions: 36 feet

 

Number of (front wall only) –

Butterflies: 7 (1 in caterpillar and 1 in chrysalis stage)

Flowers: 39

Ferns: 3

Magpies: 2

Wheat(s?): 17

Oak Leaves: 4

Acorns: 3

Honeycombs: 97

Honey Bees: 2

Kittens: 0

Stars: 30

Drips: 16

Embossed Makers Marks: 4

Depression Glass Plates: 17

When Neile’s Away…

by Robert

Last week, Neile was off to western Pennsylvania to teach a class at Touchstone Center for the Arts, so I was able to take over the entire studio. It sure was nice to have so much workspace to myself - when this space was my old garage, it was always too cluttered to actually work in.

As you can see above, the studio is looking pretty good, except for that nasty old garage door. We’ll soon replace it with a double door of glass panels, sized to fit the Makers Mark panels (12 at a time), so that we can check the continuity of the separate panels. With the help of Mark next door, we’ll construct a steel skeleton for the doors. Thus, I began the week mitering and grinding 48 pieces of 1” angle steel to exactly 22 inches each, so that Mark will have an “easy” time welding them into perfect squares for the door.

I started off the week by photographing all of the new panels that had been completed since my last photography session. I then added those photos to the master scale drawing.

All panels completed and photographed through column 11!

All panels completed and photographed through column 11!

With that task done, I moved on to Crates 2.0. My first attempt at building crates taught me that we’d need to have FAR smaller containers in order to protect the finished glass. Plus, I had built Frankenstein monstrosities, as I tried to use only reclaimed pallet wood, and it might be nice to deliver these beautiful panels in more refined packaging. So, I supplemented pallet wood with some store bought lumber and came up with something a bit nicer. The old crates have been coming in handy, though, to hold the bulk of the panels that the studio workers have been crafting at a great pace.

With that complete, I spent some time making canvas panels to hide the storage under the workbenches. Previously, I had used grommets to hold the canvas up (I thought it was pretty cool to have a grommet tool), but that solution was messy, and now things look much neater, as you can see in the photo above.

As I was finishing up all of these tasks, I received a photo from Mark, showing me that he had tack welded the first batch of squares together. Looks like next week will include prepping the rough opening for the new garage door!

Glitches, man!

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It has been so much fun to  walk into Youghiogheny and Bullseye Glass and pick out the best stuff from their amazing selections.  And to have the opportunity to use all these beautiful clear textures from Lamberts!!!  All these special glasses are so unique, organic, personal, authentic, quirky….  I know that they’ll add to the overall aesthetic of the project, but I also love that some people will look at the more subtle details, like the varieties of textured glass in the stars, and think, “wow, I love that glass with the tiny bubbles right there… it’s just so beautiful!”

That said, when I realized that I needed some more Lamberts Weak Seedy glass to finish the front wall, it was HORRIBLE to hear, “It’s out of stock, and the next container ship from Germany won’t be heading over until some time in October.”  Fortunately, we were able to track down some Regular Seedy glass, and it’s just as perfect, so I’ll go with that!

Other glitches:  Robert had set a deadline of the end of this week for the steel studio door construction, but he seems to keep getting sidetracked by other aspects of this project, and has put the door on the back burner.  Count your blessings though… while discussing the door project with his cousin Mike (who can build and/or fix pretty much anything), they found a measurement in the curtain wall drawing that did not match the dimensions of my stained glass design!  It was a glitch that was easily remedied right now, but which might have given us headaches if we didn’t notice it until further along.

Project Manager’s Report – Studio Door Prototype

By Robert

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I’m working with Mark T. to create the studio door that Neile envisions – it’ll consist of a steel framework that mimics the dimensions of the aluminum curtain wall that will hold the stained glass panels at Makers Mark.  I’ve never worked with steel before and don’t know how to weld, but Mark is big thinker and knows this type of stuff… he’s spent a lot of time building mountain bike and snowboard park features at our local mountain, which has a creek (no, he didn’t build the awesome (?) loop-de-loop water slide!).  We made a prototype of one square for the door in 1” angle steel.  To check for fit of the stained glass, I asked Carissa to mock up a panel using the zinc lengths that ultimately form the exterior edge of each square.  For ease of testing, she made the panel a cardboard (rather than glass) interior.  For verisimilitude, she added the butterfly, and I added some tupperware so that we wouldn’t damage any depression glass.

With a Little Help From My Friends

I’m well into the second half of the front wall, with columns 10 and 11 (out of 14) laid out on my workbench. 

I have put out the call to everyone we know to drink lots of Makers Mark and give me the empty bottles. I’m cutting the embossed logo out of the bottles to put into the panels as little easter eggs - I think the raised texture pairs well with that of the depression glass. I’m averaging about a 50% success rate of getting the logo out of the bottle without breaking it.

Photographing completed panels

We’re almost done soldering column 9.

Rob photographed the 26 completed panels, columns 1 through 8.  Stained glass is notoriously difficult to photograph:  one camera and lighting setup captures colors, but not textures, another setup shows texture but not translucence, etc.  We settled for one shot with backlighting and a second with ambient light.  The backlit photos are so vividly colorful, but they look more like an illustration than a glass panel.  The photos below were snapped consecutively, with no changes at all to the setup, except for turning on the lightbox beneath the panel.

Rob then cropped all of the ambient photos (so we’d see some texture) and created a collage upon a 1/5 scale rendering of my final sketch, with the photos replacing their respective sketched panes.

Finished panels are photographs in columns 1-8, 9-14 are still sketches.

The Mystery Column

Finished up the second week with studio assistants. Things are going well.  We’ve put about 20 finished panels into the large pallet crates, but I realize that we probably need to build smaller ones to keep them from leaning on each other, and to be able to move the crates around (and eventually get them onto a truck without a forklift). 

Robert printed 24” tall scale drawings of the vestibule front wall and mounted one in my basement studio and one in the garage studio.  It’s missing column 5 (see April 17 post), which my assistants quickly began calling “the mystery column!” 

Studio drawing with the mystery column.

Little do they know that I’ve got that column all laid out downstairs, and it features three stages of the life of a monarch butterfly.  There’s more than a little inspiration for including this subject:  every summer, I’ve watched and nurtured the monarchs who thrive in our milkweed patch out behind the studio.  Furthermore, during one of my visits to Makers Mark, Alex Bowie told me that Star Hill Farm is a way station for migrating monarch butterflies, which are a special sight for summertime visitors.  I love the continuity of this… migrating species show us how connected we are, even across great distances. And, finally, there’s a symbolic aspect: Robert G asserts that the chrysalis is a neat symbol for fermentation, or for barrel aging, where earthly raw ingredients spend time in a mystical vessel before emerging in an even more beautiful and spirited form.

The mystery revealed!

A chrysalis outside the studio door.

A chrysalis outside the studio door.

The studio is finally up and running!

We just finished up the first week with studio assistants.  On Tuesday, Carissa, Jody, and Lauren were all working at the same time.   Ally and Michi helped out later in the week.  It looks like I’ve found an awesome group of talented assitants.

I’m so glad to have the help.  I have only taken a day off here or there for the past 2 months, and haven’t had a real “weekend” since our New Hampshire trip in early April after getting the final approval on the drawings and sending in the book manuscript.  June went by in an absolute whirl. 

 

Love this… Margie looking over the studio as we practice our craft.

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