my life in 100 objects...# 6

Carved and etched glass (not a single object but many) or rather my carved and etched glass studio, Custom Etched Glass, from which I/we made our living for over 40 years.

Oklahoma Heart Hospital meditation room

I married young the first time, 21, because that’s what women did back then, found a man and got married. This was at the cusp of things changing for women, before we could get our own bank account or a loan or purchase a house without having a father or husband cosign, before we could get credit cards of our own, back when many jobs and professions and opportunities and the education needed for them were denied us. That marriage last 3 1/2 years before I divorced him for various reasons and even though I had expressed myself in art and craft my whole life, majored in art in college, I spent those three and a half years at whatever job I could find to pay the bills because the man I had married worked for about six months and then sporadically if at all after that. 

After the divorce I moved back in with my parents because I had no resources and was between jobs and I spent those months trying to decide what the fuck I was going to do with my life. I started drawing again, working with pen and ink mostly. I knew I did not want a dead end job as a sales clerk and commercial art, ie drawing illustrations for the yellow pages phone book, just wasn’t appealing and I had no idea how to go about getting a commercial art job anyway. During this time I met a guy, a self employed artist/craftsman with his own studio/shop who got by with whatever job he could get. He wasn’t much older than me at the time and I would drop by now and then and visit. Two things happened, one when I expressed my envy that he was a self employed creative he responded that anybody can do it. Those few words hit me like a spark going off. The other thing that happened was I dropped by one day while he was sandblasting a crudely stenciled rose on a piece of plate glass, experimenting for a remodel job he had. I watched him do that and when he had finished I told him "show me how to do that". The second spark had ignited, I could make a living doing that I thought. 

So I took the plunge and decided to make my way as an artist as opposed to getting a ‘real’ job and started my etched glass studio. I chose to focus on commission work instead of making stuff and then trying to sell it. Even though that was my first step, making small framed etched glass pieces to be hung in windows the goal was always to engender interest in using etched glass in architectural settings…door lites, side lites, windows, window walls as it seemed infinitely wiser to sell the work and then make it and as soon as I started getting commissions I stopped doing craft/art shows. 

During these first seminal years I met and married my husband and partner. At the time he was working in the machine shop at Hughes Tool Company but when I got pregnant in 1977 he quit and devoted himself to my artistic endeavor and took over the actual etching and carving part of the glass and taking care of the business end (taxes, payroll, etc.) leaving me to do sales, design, stencils, and some of the fabrication. We did this work until we retired at the end of 2017. We did residential, commercial, and corporate commissions with work all over the US and a few overseas.

residential front entry

residential master bedroom clerestory windows

residential master bath window