To honor his three-year-old adopted daughter’s admiration for Dolly Parton, Matthew Falcone commissioned Pittsburgh Stained Glass to concoct a small window that featured a blue butterfly as the centerpiece.
Although he found Falcone’s request eccentric, Kirk Weaver, owner and operator of Pittsburgh Stained Glass, was set on making it happen.
Chief artist Adam Smith got out his sketch pad and dreamed up a way to portray Dolly Parton in the form of a stained glass figure - enter the vibrant blue butterfly.
The presence of Pittsburgh glass did not altogether vanish after the extraction of the two large industrial glass factories within the city limits post-World War II. In its place shines the ever-expanding entity of stained glass, a growing front that merges Pittsburghers of all varieties: children, artists, collectors, religious leaders, scholars, historians, glass cutters, welders, to name a few.
The presence of stained glass has lit up even the most common of Pittsburgh neighborhoods, like steelworkers group housing facilities, for instance. Pittsburgh boasts some of the most breathtaking and impressive works of architectural glass in the country, making it a hot spot for glass admirers.
ANNE MADARASZ, CURATOR OF ALL THINGS GLASS:
For more than 100 years, Pittsburgh served as the center of the glass industry in the United States.
The first two glass factories formed in 1797. Pittsburgh Glass Works was located in the center of downtown Pittsburgh, directly adjacent to Point State Park, and situation right underneath the Monongahela Incline, which at the time was referred to as Coal Hill. The coal produced right on the mountain was funneled directly into powering the glass production. The other glass factory was located in Fayette County, dubbed The New Geneva Glass Works. The factory, which mainly employed German immigrants, was created by Albert Gallatin, who went on to be secretary treasurer of the United States.
These two factories produced functional pieces like flat glass, bottles, jelly bowls, and window glass. Location was key - at the time, most glass houses in America were located on the east coast. In order to retrieve glass goods, you had to travel across the mountains. There were no steamboats to take anyone upriver at the time, and glass iis not something that travels well on winding bends and over mountains.
“It makes sense that you’d get the development of the industry here because of the abundance of coal,” Anne Madarasz, director of curatorial division and chief historian of Heinz History Center, said “The eastern glass houses all used lumber. The fact that there’s iron manufacturing going on here, and there are iron molds they were using for glass production, by the 1840s, this really became the glass capital of the nation.”
An historian at heart and glass connoisseur, Madarasz played the biggest role in creating the only glass-centric exhibit in the Heinz History Center. The exhibit, titled “Glass Shattering Notions,” has been on display for 20 years, and the long term exhibit displays everything from jelly bowls to rows of glass bottles.
“Everything from tableware, lamps and lighting, industrial glassware, window glass and flat glass, plate glass, this has been a major center for the innovation of, production of, the development and marketing and distribution of glass for the country and even beyond,” Madarasz said.
Heinz History Center presently possesses what is considered one of the most impressive collections of regional glass in the country. The exhibit walks museum visitors through innovations in manufacturing and design.
“It asks the question, ‘Where do new ideas come from in glass?’ Then it talks about glass in our lives and what it means,” Madarasz said. “So it’s a thematic representation of glass here in Pittsburgh, but through different lenses and with different opportunities to enter into that story and enter into that experience.”
Pittsburghers began losing their jobs in glass production as early as the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit. By the end of World War II, most glass production had significantly decreased, due to outsourcing, among other reasons.
“Once you have the means of production and the materials, and you can somehow make it cheaper, like in mexico where the labor costs were cheaper, you’re going to do it there,” Madarasz expressed.
Additionally, alternative materials came to replace a lot of household items that were once made of glass - paper cups, styrofoam, aluminum cans instead of bottles. Madarasz also said changed in lifestyle contribute to a lack of need for glass in Pittsburgh.
“People used to go and register for a full set of china and glass, but now, people just don’t live like they used to,” she said. Plus, the cost of natural gas went way up, so when your bottom line costs are more expensive, when your labor costs are more expensive, when lifestyles change, things are being made out of other materials...that’s what basically decimated the industry in the last 40 years.”
Most glass you would purchase at a store like Target or Crate and Barrel are crafted in Eastern Europe or China, where the labor costs have become much cheaper. Even when Heinz History Center erected the glass exhibit, there was much more glass production going on within the area than there is now.
“When we did the 1998 exhibit, there were 26 operating factories in the area in the whole region,” she said. “Today there are maybe 6, so there was an enormous die off in the last 20 years.”
The earliest use of color (or stain) in glass windows began during steamboat production, for the most wealthy and opulent of guests and experiences. Pittsburgh didn’t see a lot of glass as architectural features until the late 1800s.
The height of the city’s wealth corresponds with the use of stained glass as an architectural feature,” Madarasz said. “Both in churches and in secular uses in businesses and homes, so there's that kind of coalescence that really fuels the investment and the growth of some major studios, stained glass or art glass studios.”
While there are a number of stained glass studios that have come and gone, some still thrive from way-back-when, including both Pittsburgh Stained Glass and Hunt Stained Glass.
Presently, there are about eight stained and industrial glass collector groups in the region. They curate everything from the earliest, simplest pieces to contemporary art glasses, according to Madarasz.
“So there's still factory production in the region, and there's still new art being born in the region, and there's certainly an architectural legacy in the region that kind of tells the story of pittsburgh fot developments in stained glass,” she said.
While industrial glass may have left for good, stained glass has remained an outlet and enterprise for Pittsburghers.
MATTHEW FALCONE, COLLECTOR AND HISTORIAN:
Matthew Falcone’s stained glass journey began by nearly sneaking into his neighbor’s house.
Falcone’s North Side home is one of five identical houses; two of them have original, opulent stained glass. His house, however, had none.
With a background in art history as well as an advanced education in preservation and medieval stained glass, Falcone knew he wanted to take a closer look at the houses that had the original glass. This curiosity led him to knock on his neighbor’s door.
When no one answered the doorbell, he carefully cracked open the door to get a better look, only to have his neighbor greet him, befuddled.
“I was ready to walk in; I really was,” Falcone said, laughing.
This began the road toward restoring his old home to the original stained glass beauty it once was, according to Falcone’s extensive research.
Through an England-based connection, Falcone was directed to the doorstep of Hunt Stained Glass. Here, he presented his proposal for an identical stained glass window to that of his neighbors, to which late owner and chief artist Nick Parrendo gave an enthusiastic “of course!”
Through time, he became more acquainted with his neighbor, and went on to ask him for a rubbing of the window in order to recreate an identical piece in his own home. Falcone’s obsession and passion for restoring his home began.
On the road toward restoring his home as well as seeking out new works for his interior, Falcone became more and more acquainted with the Hunt Stained Glass artists, and through his experience with restoration and appraisal, began assisting them in consulting work for years. It was here that he met Adam Smith, chief artist of Pittsburgh Stained Glass.
Falcone had an idea for two different pieces he wanted for the interior of his home, and since Hunt was working on two pieces for Falcone, he decided to ask Smith to put together some mock-ups for him of what he wanted.
While Falcone’s taste might have been more unusual than some traditional glass collectors, Smith was up to the challenge. After all, Hunt was working on a piece for Falcone’s coal cellar that included two Pittsburgh parking chairs.
“They didn’t know if I was joking or not when I walked into their office and said, ‘I want Moonstruck and I want Sher.’”
Falcone’s grandmother’s kitchen is where he remembers his happiest memories of childhood taking place. He retrieved a picture of the kitchen and asked for it to be completely redone, but in glass.
“My grandmother's kitchen...I will remember that place until the day I die,” Falcone said. “I have such warm memories of her. Adam did an amazing job. It looks just like I remember it.”
In addition, Falcone wanted two more pieces set in kitchens, as he said pop culture kitchens meant a lot to him as a product of the eighties. He requested a scene from Moonstruck, as well as one from The Golden Girls.
“I remember The Golden Girls sitting around and eating cheesecake, and I remember Moonstruck, because I come from a very italian family. They were so important to me,” he said.
And so the pieces were made and installed by Pittsburgh Stained Glass. Falcone had one final request for an interior piece, but this time - it would be as much a gift for his three-year-old daughter as it was for him.
The piece would divide his office from his daughter’s room, and he wracked his brain to come up with something that would unite both spaces. For symbolism related to him and his work as president of Preservation Pittsburgh, he wanted to include the skyline, as well as the first four historical landmarks that he assisted in preserving. For his daughter, he called upon her love for music, specifically that of country music singer Dolly Parton.
“Music has always been a big inspiration for me and for my family,” Falcone said. “But how do I work Dolly Parton into a stained glass window that also has the pittsburgh skyline in it?”
The answer was a blue butterfly - one of Parton’s trademarks. Another feature on the window was the portrait of a cat that his family inherited when one of their close friends passed away. Nervous about the cat adjusting properly to life with two small children, Falcon wondered if he would ever adjust. What happened was an almost immediate connection to his daughter.
After the adoption of their two children, Falcone and his husband sat down and thought about ways they could give back to the community, specifically relating to stained glass. They came up with an idea for a small grant that would help Pittsburghers restore their stained glass in their homes.
“When she came into our life, we felt an obligation to give, that the universe had given us such an amazing gift,” Falcone said. “In some way, we needed to give back. And what we ended up doing was develop a very small foundation that gives out annual grants for stained glass in Pittsburgh, specifically targeted at residential stained glass - people who are interested in restoration or in new works. The entire idea was that it would just help to make the world a more beautiful place.”
HUNT STAINED GLASS, A FAMILY AFFAIR:
When David and Celeste Parrendo’s father was 10 years old, he was hospitalized for having debilitating stomach pains.
That year, he missed almost every day of school. Instead, his days were spent scrounging for a diagnosis in Children’s Hospital - but it was here that Nick Parrendo first discovered drawing. Encouraged by a nurse, he doodled and painted for the entirety of his stay.
Nick survived the bout of stomach problems, and went on to grow up in the North Side of Pittsburgh, opting for art over other past times his peers were interested in, like sports.
As a young man, he sought employment at Hunt Stained Glass - a multi-level stained glass building owned by a man named Henry Hunt. Hunt had learned the craft of stained glass from his father back in London, England. His family immigrated to Pittsburgh in the late 1800s, and eventually opened his own studio in 1906. Hunt had two sons were active in the business, and Nick Parrendo, an aspiring artist, was given a job by Hunt’s oldest son in the year 1950. Parrendo apprenticed for three years alongside 24 employees, learning the trade and mastering the construction of stained glass windows, largely for religious institutions.
The 1950s saw a huge surge in church building, and the decade was a successful and busy time for Hunt Stained Glass.
After completing his apprenticeship, Parrendo worked as a designer and glass cutter, until the business went up for sale in 1987. In order to do so, he had to mortgage his house.
“He purchased it when people his age were probably thinking of retiring,” son David Parrendo said. “But he just had this passion for creating artwork. He was the master artist. He was active here up until the time he passed.”
David Parrendo has been on board at Hunt Stained Glass for 30 years - working not only alongside his dad before his passing in 2016, but also his sister, a muralist by trade who occasionally helped her dad out at the shop when they were particularly swamped with work.
Celeste Parrendo studied art at Edinboro University and chose a concentration in painting. Anxious about finding a job within her field of work, she turned to a professor who encouraged her to look into set painting for plays and productions. She went on to work for Pittsburgh Public Theater and CLO, as well as other art groups, all while occasionally helping at the shop. In addition, she painting the ceiling of the Austrian Nationality Room at the University of Pittsburgh.
In recent months, Celeste has transitioned to a full-time addition to the studio. She usually works six days a week and spends her time hunched over a light table, painting delicate faces and figures onto pieces of glass, sometimes until nine o’clock at night. Although the work is painstaking and meticulous, Celeste says the hardest part of working as a stained glass artist has very little to do with the physical or mental toll.
“The hardest part of this is missing my father,” she said, delicately painting a bit of a cheek onto the face of an angel character. “Everybody just loved my dad. He was so passionate about what he did.”
Celeste’s current project is part of an ongoing new work commision for a chapel at a girl’s school in Oakland. The project has taken over a year and half due to the incredible size of the commission - and Celeste, in the workings of a stained glass production, is just one of the small, moving parts - is hand-painting 19 figures in total for the windows. Each figure that she’s portraying is larger than life size.
“Each figure is very large,” Celeste said. “Selecting the colors, laying out the patterns, doing the painting, firing the kiln...it’s a lot to do.”
All of Hunt Stained Glass’ work is completed now by 6 employees. Compared to the 24 that were fulltime in the fifties, it’s a lot of toil for six full time employees to handle, especially because, according to David, there’s more work than ever happening at the studio.
The list of work, just for one month, almost filled up an entire page. Most of it is restoration and repair work in religious buildings and places of worship, although there were several commissions for completely new work, like the girl’s school.
Each floor in the three level building possesses a specific purpose. The top floor is home to an office that is filled to the brim with old drawings and markups for projects that have long come and gone. The hallway leading to the office space is splitting at the seams with old literature and books related to religious research - methods that Nick would call upon when designing a new window for a denomination-specific piece.
“Just in terms of knowing scriptures, if he had to do a saint, he would read about them, and always share what he found out,” Celeste said of her father. “He would get so excited about it, which was really wonderful. He wanted to do it all, and he could do it all. He really could.”
While David said that traditionally, Catholics and Episcopalian churches normally opt for the most ornate window installment, Methodists and Presbyterians come in at a close second.
While their father was a dedicated Catholic, David and Celeste consider themselves more free-spirited and less rigid and religious - although they do both still consider faith an integral part of their lives - inside the walls of the studio as well as out.
“A lot of research goes into developing designs especially for different denominations of churches, because a lot of times you’re developing a theme that is based around scriptures,” David said.
Inside the office, you’ll find Nick’s aging doodles, old family Christmas card designs, and mockups for projects. Religious imagery covers every inch of the walls, and the theme follows you out on the terrace, where Nick hand-painted a multi-panel mural on the side of the building. The mural depicts both Old and New Testament symbolism and imagery, detailing anything from Moses’ parting of the Red Sea to the baptism of the disciples with tongues of fire in the upper room.
Downstairs, on the main floor where the entrance is located, is where most of the clientele new work is completed. Here, small drawings of potential window designs are concocted with watercolors and charcoal that outline tiny little led lines, courtesy of Celeste.
“When we’re working with clients, whether it be for an individual home, or for a different denomination of church, we’ll start off with the idea of getting some input from them in terms of what they're looking for, for their residence or their house of worship,” David, who handles most of the business and customer relations side of Hunt Stained Glass, said. “From that initial contact, our artists would come up with some ideas in those small scale renderings.”
If they like what they see, they draw up a contract, and the team of six begins their work.
Also located on the first floor is an enormous collection of glass - all imported, ranging from hand-blown to machine compressed. This glass comes from all over the world - mostly from Germany and England, but some from right next door in West Virginia.
After the piece is drawn up, it’s here that they search for the right glass pieces to use. They then gather from their expansive inventory and mark each section on the small drawing. The pieces are moved to the painting room, located right next to the glass storage room, and directly beside the firing kiln. Hunt still has the original kiln that’s gas-fired and takes up an entire side room of its own, because of its large scale. They recently purchased a much newer (and much smaller) kiln. Steaming heat poured from its vents.
“It’s programmable to get just the right pigment,” David said, proudly patting the cooled top of the instrument as he walked by.
Inside the painting room, there are art easels as big as the windows themselves. Two light tables line the edge of the walls, where Celeste handpaints the details onto the smooth glass. The pieces move to one of the light tables - which is just what it sounds like - cold, bright light flowing up from underneath a plexiglass table, in order to light it from the back and mimic what the pieces and colors would look like in a window. As the sheets and individual pieces become finished, they are carefully transported down the steps, through another storage area with even more of a glass stash (this time machine-rolled only), eventually finding its way into the room where the other four employees work.
This room is filled with glass cutters, saws, crates of led and buckets of concrete. It is a loud warehouse of a room, compared to the quiet painting room that almost exudes a religious-like reverence.
Shane Nichols has worked as a glass cutter at Hunt for 10 years, and has worked in stained glass for almost 20. Like everyone else in the shop, he’s working diligently on the piece for the girl’s school - just like they have been for over a year.
“It’s a relatively small operation,so we kind of all have our own specialists but we’re well versed enough that we can help each other out,” Nichols said while grinding down a circular edge on a piece of fiery orange glass.
Shane is one of two glass cutters whose primary roles are to cut and connect pieces day in and day out. Although his work is detail-oriented and causes a lot of physical strain, especially on his hands and fingers, he said he enjoys his job.
“I’m one of those lucky people who love what they do,” Nichols said. “It’s important. If you’re going to spend nine hours a day doing something, you might as well like it.”
And you might as well like it, especially if you’re going to be spending months working on one piece. Even if they’re just replacing a small broken piece in a residential window, it takes no less than a month. David said that while Nichols and one other employee are dedicated glass cutters, they do a lot more around the shop, including installation.
“They all the cutting of the glass, but they're versatile,” David said. “They can cut, do the glazing, cementing and weatherproofing, sautering. If they can help out with installation and removal, they’ll do it.”
Of all the adversity they encounter within projects, David said one of the most challenging tasks is matching ancient glass to new glass, in both color and texture.
“We save glass, because the hardest thing in this profession is trying to match glass,” he said. “When we’re replacing broken pieces, that’s the biggest challenge. If worse comes to worse and we can’t find a match in our inventory here, we’ll take a piece and send it off to our glass manufacturers and see what they might have in their inventory.”
After the work reaches its finality and completion, there’s a waiting period of a couple weeks for the compounding to set up and for the brace bars to go on - the final step before delivering the piece to the residence or place of worship.
Stained glass is built to last. Its life expectancy is normally somewhere around 75-100 years, although David said it’s common for them to last much longer. It takes a vision to make art that lasts - and that would speak to generations of worshippers.
Celeste recalled working alongside her father, when he would lay out the pieces and she would just do the painting.
“Now, I do so much more than that,” Celeste said. “It’s been challenging. Missing him has been very hard. He did it for the love of doing it, but it also was a gift that he was given and a gift that he was sharing with others.”
“It was just the artist in him,” David said. “Passion he had and the gift he was given to create.”
ADAM SMITH, CHIEF ARTIST OF PITTSBURGH STAINED GLASS AND SEASONED ENGLISHMAN:
Adam Smith grew up in a small village in England, alongside an eccentric artist aunt who would steadily supply him with art necessities and encourage him to work on projects.
“I started drawing on large pieces of wallpaper,” Smith said. “I was about five or six years old when I started drawing. It was natural for me and she kind of encouraged me.”
None of these ventures were stained glass related, although he has memories of being curious about stained glass from a very young age.
“I do remember as a kid sitting in a church ad looking at windows and wondering how they get the faces in the glass,” Smith said. “I was thinking...how do you paint on glass? Paint goes on paint and on canvas. It wasn’t until i was in my late thirties that I started to realize how to really paint on glass.”
Although Smith started out his career in teaching art, after five years, he realized he needed to do his own art full-time. He answered an ad for a stained glass apprenticeship in the paper, and he packed up and moved to Philadelphia. When his company got bought out and the work began being outsourced, he lost his job. He went to search for work in a town called Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Here, he discovered Pittsburgh Stained Glass in 2010, a family business owned and operated by Pittsburgh native Kirk Weaver after the passing of his grandfather. Similar to Hunt Stained Glass, they specialize in lots of repair and restoration work, but also do new works, as well. Smith has been there ever since.
His painting room is found on the very bottom floor of the West End building, located adjacent to the firing and cutting rooms. His space is swirling with the smell of thick, goopy paints and turpentines, and is covered in sketches and small samples of cuts of glass. Right beside his work bench is a wall-sized catalogue filled with stencils of all varieties.
Within the realm of the restoration work, Smith regularly consults these stencils in an attempt to find matches that are suited to the original work. The process is time-consuming, not unlike all of the hand-painting Smith does in the same space - sometimes using upwards of six different layers of colors in order to get the most absolutely accurate tones. His etching is demandingly intricate, and each small piece has to be hand-glazed and fired.
“Stained glass is an example of the juiciest color you’ll ever see,” Smith said. “Because it is pure color. It’s mixed with light that comes from the outside. Paint that’s painted on canvas is opaque, but I think painting with stained glas is one of the most purest forms of painting. It is the purest color.”
Throughout his work at Pittsburgh Stained Glass, Smith has painted the entire life of Christ hundreds of times, and has painted so many depictions of Christ that he was completely unable to guess exactly how many he had done. While he doesn’t believe he is as “strong” in his faith as he should be, he still said he ascribes to a belief system.
“I've painted Christ over and over again...Christ and the gang!” he laughed, hunched over the sketches in his lap. “In reading about them and reading about the characters, you know the story and you develop an appreciation for it.”
Stained glass has been around for hundreds of years, and its use in places of worship used to be so those that couldn’t read were still able to interpret Bible stories.
“if you were a peasant, a serf, with the power of the glass and the light coming through, you probably felt transformed into a holy place,” Smith said. “We still have that feeling, even though we live in a modern age. You certainly have this feeling that you are removed from the outside world into one that is more of a spiritual place, and that’s what we try to convey.”
While the Beatles singing Twist and Shout plays in the cutting room, Smith mentioned his most outlandish commissioned work to date.
“I did a couple windows recently,” Smith said. “As far as the most out there windows I’ve done - I just did The Golden Girls...and when Matthew first came here and said he wanted Dolly Parton, I said, all I’m seeing is dolly parton’s outline on a piece of art, so we ended up doing the butterfly.”
While many Pittsburgh stained glass outfits specialize in large scale religious restoration and residential work, Glenn Greene works in fine art pieces - lots of them inspired by abstract art and rock music.
GLENN GREENE STAINED GLASS AND THE GREAT 48:
Glenn Greene had 48 custom art frames and frankly, no idea what to do with them.
This lack of precise direction is a posture that Greene often assumes in his work. His maintained mantras, although fluid, are centered around listening to his insides and incorporating word play, with a sprinkle of letting his rock-n-roll freak flag fly.
“I don’t force my art too much,” Greene said. “I just sort of let the concepts come to me, and I have some kind of muse that I can’t explain; I think it’s just my inner soul or my being. It’s kind of cliche and corny - to say I’m such an artist and I’m expressing my soul, but it’s just how I work. It’s real. It’s not so cliche and corny, it’s just what I matured into as a stained glass artist.”
The year was 2004. The frames came directly from a wood door and window craftsmen, fittingly but supposedly named Chip Block. While Greene was working in-studio completing commissioned stained glass work, he asked Block if he had any scraps he could take off his hands.
Greene said Block’s eyes made their way to the ceiling out of emphasis.
“Oh yeah, I got lots of scrap,” Chip said.
After assisting Block in the design for the frames, Greene ordered about a dozen at a time and began filling them with the abstract shapes and punchy colors you’ll find in any of his fine art pieces.
“I ordered about a dozen at a time and filled them up. They were doing well, so I decided to order more. I said, ‘how about four dozen?’” Greene said.
Four dozen makes 48.
Once the shipment of miniature art frames made its way to Greene’s studio, all nestled together in one large box, Greene had a decision to make. What would all of these petite art frames become?
“I came into the studio January 2nd or 3rd of 2005 to get ready to get back to work,” Greene said. “I had some paying work at the time; I had a lot of jobs to do. And I was like, ‘well, screw it. I’m gonna pull out one of these frames and fill it with an art piece.’ I wanted to start the year off right and do an art piece, even though I still didn’t have a plan for all these frames.”
All of a sudden, just like the light that comes through windows and illuminates his carefully crafted glass, a light went off.
He came up with a concept and a title, and called it “Regality/Fantasy.”
“I do wordplay,” Greene said. “You have your reality fantasy, and then you have your regality - something that’s sort of regal - and then you have regality fantasy.”
The piece was comprised of brilliant reds and deep blues and purples.
“It was a very regal piece.”
In the midst of finishing Regality/Fantasy, Greene said another light went off “like a big flash,” to do all 48 pieces in what he refers to as a timeline. He gave himself artistic parameters - something he’s learned to do to assist in bridling the free-natured spirit of his process.
He set out ot make twelve pieces a month - no small task for a working stained glass fine artist.
“I decided to not give up and move on. I’m going to complete one thought. I had the idea of 48 separate artist statements and thoughts and pieces - to ultimately finish it and move on to the next one.”
Another guideline - don’t fret about making them fit together.
“The third parameter was don’t concern yourself with worrying about making them work together,” Greene said. “Just make them all individual thoughts. So I was able to do it - January, February, March, April 2005, boom, we had the Great 48.”
All 48 custom frames were painted a brilliant black to bring out the punch of the glass. Since the frames were all custom window frames and have routed detail, the frames themselves were just as unique as the glass inside.
“I often have a thing that I say, and I’ve said it for years and years - ‘painting is for windows,’” Greene said. “I like to think as windows as wall space. This helps bring forth more of my other art theories - windows as wall space and stained glass more as fine art paintings.”
Greene obsessed over deeming the pieces with clever names - some inspired by music. Hailing from America’s rock-n-roll capital of Cleveland, Ohio, Greene found glass right before his 16th birthday in 1979. Before discovering his affection for solder, led and the colorful, textured slabs of glass that consume his Edgewood studio, he dreamt of becoming a rock star or a record shop owner.
Some of his pieces mimic his passion for driving guitars and crashing cymbals. Referencing bands like the Grateful Dead and the Minutemen, his pieces flirt with the entity of song titles and band names.
“I’m really into the music and I have all these musical heroes,” Greene said. “I’m really into visual art and I’m also into writing and I love to read. So I see all these different human ways of expressing art forms and I get very excited about other people creating art. So I’m excited about other people’s inspiration, and I basically just learn how to be excited about my own inspiration.”
Greene concentrated on completing twelve pieces a month, which meant putting off quite a bit of paying work. The art was feeling good, so he ordered 48 more.
“The same exact sizes,” Greene said. “And then ultimately it took me a long time to document and display the first ones. Here I was and I blazed out all this art and was very prolific - and I wasn’t very prolific about promoting it and documenting it - getting it out to the public. I really fell behind on that.”
It took Greene four years to have a proper opening for them, when he had an in-studio show in 2009.
“Here it took four months to make them all, and four years to get done with the documentation to have an opening for them,” Greene emphasized.
He has them hanging in dozens. His dream is to have a huge storefront where he could hang all 48 of them in a row - maybe four rows of 12 or eight rows of six.
The Great 48 and The Great 48 II, what he calls his second installation of the 48 piece-long series, may be his life’s biggest and accomplished series, but his collection doesn’t stop there. After the 2016 election, Greene created pieces in response to the Trump administration. The upstairs gallery of his workshop displays the string of pieces that he calls “The Reader Series” - works designed to mimic newsprint and the written word. With names like “The Daily Sun’s Yellow Journalism,” “The Gray Area,” “Clear and Present,” “Perpetual Purple Propaganda” and “The News Blues.”
The pieces employ the use of scrap strips of glass - or what glass artists call sheet ends. The 10x20 inch pieces imitate a document or written page.
“They’re about being a written visual,” Greene said. “They’re a bit socio-political. After the election, I thought, ‘I’ve got so much to say about this. I’m just freaking out. I’m just ready to start babbling.’ So I babbled with glass. And I was thinking about the Declaration of Independence, and how Trump’s going to put it right through the shredder, our civil rights. And a lot of the time you’ll see old documents with no frame and clear with no matting, so that the document is floating in clear, so that was the inspiration for the whole series.”
It took Greene a few months to finish the 11-piece series, only a fraction of The Great 48 series. Greene found the process creating the glass soothing.
“I found it gratifying, therapeutic and healing,” Greene said. “I was trying to do that for other people. A lot of times when I do art, I do want it to put out positivity and healing - those love things. Feelings!”
Greene has plans for The Great 48 III, although he’s not officially decided to call them that yet. He already has all of the antiques frames. All he’s waiting for is the lightbulb.