Cardiff woman's stained-glass rooms and windows make art part of living
By Debra Lee Baldwin
UNION-TRIBUNE January 29, 2006
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Stained
glass by Cardiff artist Viola St. Pierre combines geometric forms with
glass of all kinds, from chandelier crystals to glass from old windows.
Each finished work "tells a story," she says.
|
|
|
|
This is the first in an occasional series on San Diego-area artisans.
A door literally opened a new life for Cardiff artist Viola St. Pierre.
“I
owned a home in Dallas that was a brick box,” she recalls. “To make it
a house I wanted to come home to, I cut a hole in the front door, and
dropped in stained glass. As the sun moved, that window reflected color
all across the floor. It was magical.” While
gazing at sparkling shafts of light, St. Pierre decided “stained glass
was my passion, not corporate life. I could do without fancy cars and
expensive clothes. I had known people who had waited all their lives to
live, but by then it was too late.” So,
at age 29, she quit a good-paying job and put her house up for sale.
Despite a sluggish real estate market, “it sold in two weeks. The
buyers liked the stained glass. It had transformed the place.” When
St. Pierre, who grew up in the East and has a degree in fine art and
art education from Rhode Island College, downsized, she lived and
worked in small apartments and rented rooms. But instead of making
windows, she used bits of stained glass to fashion jewelry, a
creatively fulfilling craft that requires minimal space. Her business
grew, and “at one time I had five reps,” she recalls. “But when I got
an order for 75 of the same item, I realized it wasn't art anymore.”
In the early '90s, St. Pierre followed a Dallas friend to Encinitas and
fell in love with the seaside city. She bought a 1940s cottage, then
took a break from art to raise her son Dakota, now 10, and daughter
Sonnet, 8. As the century drew to a close, her own home once again
opened a door for her ... and windows, too. Temples of light
St.
Pierre's home in old Encinitas was close enough to the train tracks to
hear Amtrak blasts, and high enough on the hillside to catch glimpses
of the ocean. Yet like her Dallas house, it was “a nondescript box with
nothing interesting going on,” she says. As
she watched neighboring Craftsman bungalows being razed and replaced,
St. Pierre turned dismay into action. She rescued vintage tiles, ornate
door hardware and wavy-paned windows with beveled glass “lights” (small
panes along the top) and soon accumulated an eclectic collection of
architectural salvage.
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Viola
St. Pierre, shown here in her studio, left corporate life to follow her
passion - stained glass. Her "collages" often include symbols and
stylized letters. |
St. Pierre needed a studio – her 1,600-square-foot cottage was cramped,
so she decided to enclose an 80-square-foot porch beneath a
second-story balcony. With a carpenter's help, she used old doors, with
their original faceted glass knobs attached, for the walls. Beveled and
stained-glass panels, large and small, filled gaps, captured light and
made the interior a jewel box. Mirrors within the room reflected the
garden, visually enlarged the space and merged inside and out. The
finished studio so soothed and delighted her, St. Pierre christened it
her “soul temple.” She created another, a free-standing sun room, in
the back yard, then went on to enclose her home's front porch with
recycled and new stained-glass windows, and add them to her house as
well. “Art
is the song of the imagination,” she says. “Living within art, and
being surrounded by it, connects you with an incredible source of joy
and strength.” She started a business, Soul Temple Productions, “to
create beautiful stained-glass rooms and windows for others to enjoy.” Costs and components
By
networking with fellow Encinitas artists and hosting art sales at her
home, St. Pierre got the word out about her endeavor. The North County Times featured her work; a 15-minute segment ran on KPBS Full Focus; and in the summer of '03, an article in Outdoor Style, a Better Homes and Gardens publication, earned her national recognition.
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Windows
of a client's Leucadia home glow with Viola St. Pierre's stained glass
artistry. St. Pierre calls rooms like this "soul temples." |
In 2004, prisms and glowing glass again helped sell her house. She says
the owners of her former Encinitas home are delighted by its dual soul
temples, and use them as his-and-hers home offices. St.
Pierre, now closer to the ocean in Cardiff, does residential projects
that vary in size and complexity from small windows, which she makes in
a day, to entire walls and free-standing structures that take a month
or more. Her focus has shifted from recycling windows to creating new
ones, although she may use vintage materials when available and
appropriate for the project. No
two installations are alike, so prices vary widely. In bidding a job,
St. Pierre estimates how much time it will take for window design and
assembly, plus building costs. (Her builder/carpenter is Ed Jester of
Vista.) Components might be as simple as clear glass alternating with
cobalt, or as pricey as faceted glass jewels, which run from $10 to $14
for a 2-inch square. Her ballpark: “Stained-glass rooms start at $100 per square foot, and stained-glass windows at $350 per foot.”
Universal symbols
Several
recently commissioned windows at St. Pierre's studio illustrate her
distinctive style. Their geometric arrangements of glass squares,
circles and rectangles bring to mind Impressionist artist Piet
Mondrian, but St. Pierre says she has been more inspired by
artist-architects Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Antoni Gaudi.
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Stained
glass artist Viola St. Pierre makes her one-of-a-kind works in her
garage studio. Stylized hearts, like the one in the panel to the rear,
are a favorite symbol. |
The variety of objects she incorporates likely would have astonished
those designers, as well as early-20th-century glass artist Louis
Comfort Tiffany, whose coveted Art Nouveau lamps and windows remain
unparalleled. St.
Pierre uses chandelier crystals; beveled glass squares and rectangles;
circular mandalas with intricately sandblasted patterns; antique glass
tiles with raised patterns; stained glass from old church windows; and
clear, colored, textured and/or dichroic glass she purchases new, by
the sheet. Moreover,
each window “tells a story,” St. Pierre says. She includes archetypal
forms that range from those readily recognized, such as hearts, stars,
arrows and stylized suns, to images that suggest primitive cave
paintings, and symbolic letters (made of glass rods) from the alphabets
of ancient cultures. A
four-panel window titled “The Pathway Home” created for the new Chopra
Center in Olivenhain incorporates ancient runes from Nordic mythology.
Another two-panel window glows red, golden yellow and shades of blue,
and includes bead-like glass tiles with words on them, such as
“Believe.” “I
use universal symbols that are part of the collective consciousness,”
St. Pierre says. “People recognize these on a subconscious level, and
as they look at them, experience new understandings and realizations.”
Such symbols “provide a spiritual flow of energy that helps people on
their journey of life.” Fused and etched glass
Unlike
traditional stained-glass art, St. Pierre's designs, which she calls
“collages,” don't depict objects, animals or biblical scenes. Nor do
her windows resemble stained-glass florals popular in the 1970s and
'80s. Typical
stained-glass windows depict their subjects with pieces of colored
glass held in place with lead strips soldered together. These have
channels that conform to the edges of the glass and hold it securely.
Although the panes that comprise St. Pierre's windows are outlined with
lead, many have a bright intricacy unimpeded by black lines due to her
use of fused and etched glass.
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Viola St. Pierre incorporated a variety of glass types and textures in her work. A favorite is irridescent dichroic glass. |
A kiln in her studio, which she lines with a special paper that
prevents molten glass from sticking, enables St. Pierre to melt pieces
of glass together. The colorful results resemble hard candy. In
the center of one window is a red glass heart fused to a rectangle of
milky glass beneath it. Along the sides are Greek key spirals of
shimmering dichroic glass fused onto blue and red squares of beveled
glass. At the top, confetti-like bits of dichroic glass, fused onto a
golden-yellow rectangle, appear to float out of a red circle – a
sandblasted mandala – encircled with lead. The
focal point of yet another window is a sandblasted primitive human
figure, reaching for a sandblasted triangle within a circle (“the
ascension of man,” St. Pierre explains). Design inspiration
With infinite pattern possibilities and a diverse palette of materials, how does St. Pierre decide on a design?
“I
meet with the owners to find out what they hope to gain from the
addition of stained glass to their home,” she says. “I study the house
and architecture, and how sunlight impacts the area.” Her
inspiration for a Leucadia mosaic artist who wanted to enclose a wall
of her studio with brilliant, glowing glass, was “an aspect of the
garden – a grape vine with blue-purple grapes,” St. Pierre says. A wall
of windows with repetitions of green, blue and purple panes “is my
interpretation of grapes and leaves and a way to make inside and
outside flow together.” To make sure clients share her vision, “I show
them a preliminary sketch of the concept for their approval.”
Sometimes the creative process is serendipitous, like an installation
she did for Vista homeowner Tamara Stark. When her grandmother's Arts
and Crafts house near downtown was torn down, Stark salvaged
100-year-old, wavy-paned windows, each with five lights along the top. “Tamara
offered them to me,” St. Pierre recalls. “But she had wonderful
memories of visiting that house as a child, so I suggested we use the
windows in her home instead.” After
St. Pierre reconfigured them into a sun room, Stark e-mailed her: “We
love the sound of rain on the tin roof. The room is so peaceful and
feels like it hugs us with light, even on a cloudy day.” “Just think,” St. Pierre says, delighted. “Those windows became a metaphor for her grandmother's hugs.”
Try it, too
St.
Pierre, who can't pass a transom without envisioning its potential,
laments “the plain vanilla houses built today.” She urges people to
“surround themselves with color, beauty and life. And what better way
than with glass that changes as the sun moves?” Anyone
can transform a door or window into a work of art, she says. “My first
purchase was a $3 glass cutter. You can buy an 8-by-10 sheet of stained
glass for $4 or $5. You'll need goggles to protect your eyes, and a way
to grind the edges smooth, but for under $50 you can make a small
window. “Work
with colors you're drawn to,” she continues. “Go out and find beautiful
things. Look for unusual objects to put in your design – for example, I
pick up sea glass while walking on the beach.” Of
course, taking classes helps. For a comprehensive list of those offered
locally, visit the Web site of the Art Glass Association of Southern
California (www.agasc.org), of which St. Pierre is a member; it is headquartered at Studio 25, in Spanish Village, Balboa Park; (619) 702-8006.
She
adds, “I love the phrase, 'live in art.' I want to inspire people to
see the potential that their homes offer, and to bring beauty inside,
follow their passions, and create.” For more information on St. Pierre and her work: www.soultempleproductions.com (760) 310-8374.
 Debra Lee Baldwin is an award-winning garden and design writer who lives in North County.
|
