Learn about Stained Glass Art

Female: Patty Vangieri’s love affair with glass begun early on. Watching and learning from her mother Emily also an accomplished glass artist. Then in 1988 together they open the Glass Gallery in Nutley, New Jersey as a way to explore and teach the locals about glass. With the loving care of Patty and her mother, the Glass Gallery has grown into a place of art and learning. Patty not only restores and creates exquisite mosaics but over the last 2 decades she has past on her knowledge and love of glass to over 500 students. Patty invited me to her fabulous store to learn more about the exquisite art of stained glass mosaics. We’re here with Patty Vangieri who is a glass mosaic artist, a stain glass artist and the owner of the Glass Gallery which we are sitting in, in Nutley, New Jersey. So tell me how did you get started with this art? Patty: Basically when I was a teenager my mother had begun in the craft my aunt got involved and I always love glass, I always you know love picking it up like scraps when I was a kid. You know see glass and all that kind of thing, you know we just attracted the color, when just a material itself and of it is fascinating. Female: Now tell me about the glass factory here, what you do, classes you might offer? Patty: We’ve been here for 21 years in Nutley and basically what I do is I’m a commissioned artist, so I do custom work for people. We have workshops right here 3 times a week, we have a lot of fun and I teach classes. We’ve had probably over 500 people come here through these doors over, over the past 21 years. Female: Wow. How about restorations, you also do that, right? Patty: Yes we do, we do a lot of restored and repair, sometimes resurrections. When they are a little too far gone you can really bring anything back but you know I like to say the old stuff. Female: Now of all of the mediums, of all of the things in art. Why did you choose glass? Or did it choose you? Patty: Well a little bit of both I think. I just, I love glass, I love how I interact with glass. Whether lights reflected on it or transmitted through it. I love obviously if I’m doing for homework becomes a part of a home history. I just love the material. Female: Well wonderful, you’re a good teacher and I hear today I’ll be getting a lesson myself. So I’m very much looking for that and taking a closer look at some of your pieces. Patty: Absolutely. Female: Patty is an accomplished glass mosaic artist. She creates gorgeous pieces from stain glass lamps to mirrors, windows and other decorative pieces. Patty agreed to teach me a simple mosaic, sun catcher. Also demonstrating her process, the first step in creating a glass mosaic is to map the design on paper. The entire design is broken down into different numbered pieces, much like a jig saw puzzle. So tell me where do we start? Patty: Okay, generally when you start to do the process, you want to start at with the pattern. as you see here we have two identical patterns and basically to do that, the reason why you have two of them is because one you’re going to cut a part and use on your glass cutting. And the other one. Female: Like a template? Patty: Exactly. And the other one you’re going to keep whole as a template sort of a blue print so you can kind of reassemble your puzzle back together on. Female: What are the numbers have to do, they’re not like paint by numbers? Patty: No, not at all, we’re going to do a, you want a number the patterns identically. Obviously because when you cut the one apart to use for your glass cutting, later on when you’re working with something and you’re going to want to know the location of all those numbers when they’re all spread out in an individual pattern. Female: Okay, now so what would be the first step, once we’ve decided our pattern? Patty: We would first cut out our pattern. Female: Okay. Each individual piece? Patty: Yup, so we’re going to take a regular scissor to do that. That’s your regular scissor and we’re going to cut around and we’re just going to cut into that inside of that black line. Now we’re doing your inside part, we’re going to grab the foils shears. Female: Which are these ones here? Patty: If you notice there’s a little gap here, a little of double sided gap here on the bottom and that’s going to allow for the growth of your copper foil later on. Female: Okay. Next using the number paper pieces as templates, glasses carefully cut into similar shapes. When done with precision, this cut pieces will fit perfectly with the larger hole. Alright Patty so we’ve started this that you’ve mapped out. This is the pattern, we use 3 different types of scissors to cut out each individual’s piece. So now what’s the next step? Patty: Okay, so basically you have to regret on cutting on important pattern, what we’re going to do is we’re going to choose our glass so you would go and choose whatever colors you wanted, it’s totally artistic freedom. So we’re going to glue our pieces down. Female: Okay. Patty: So we can do some glass cutting. Female: So we’ve got these big giant sheets, obviously they need to be made into all this different shapes. Patty: Yeah exactly. Female: So we’ll cut them. Patty: So you can handle it. Female: I shut the total chill. Patty: So now we’re going to glue you piece down. Female: Okay. The piece of paper right under the glass? Patty: Yeah absolutely, so we’re going to get a little bit of glue. And just follow kind of what I do, just a little bit, its going to be enough for you. Female: Sure. Patty: This is a glass cutter, you have what it looks a little differently and it’s more comfortable for your hand. Basically when you do a glass score, the score is just basically a superficial scratch on the surface of the glass and that’s going to enable the breaks around along it. And you want to start at the edge of your glass, try navigate as close as you can to the edge of the paper while pressing down nice steady pressure. So you’d want to grab the glass at the edge pointing your 2 thumbs up and like so. Female: Right. Patty: And just kind of roll and pull it away. Female: You made that look very easy. Patty: It’s like you’re breaking a Hersey bar piece of chocolate over. Female: Okay, I’ve got some experience with that. Patty: There you go just pull away a little more ad next time you’ll do a little great. Female: Here we go. Oh this looks nice, I love the colors, beautiful. So now what’s the next step? Patty: Next we would be putting copper foil around every pieces and the reason why you want to put copper foil around everything is because when you do the following step the soldering. Solder is not going to bond to pieces of glasses together so you have to wrap them in some sort of a metal medium. Female: Alright now so we’ve gone thru and put the copper, is it copper foil? Patty: Copper foil, yeah. Female: Copper foil along each piece and then we’re piece it together. What this does is actually bonds the pieces of glasses together. Patty: Yeah, creates, it creates a perimeter around there so the solder can stick on to another metal being the copper foil tape. Female: Alright great, so now let’s just put this puzzle together? Patty: Okay. Female: And then we’ll be on to the next step. The next step is to solder the pieces together so that the mosaic is integrated whole. Soldering is a process of joining together 2 metal pieces by melting filler into the joint. The copper around the glass acts as a metal glue when solder and attaches the pieces together. Before soldering, Patty explains that it is necessary to brush the piece, put a flux solution which enables the process of metal bonding. Alright now you’ve painted that flux solution on and now you have this, 50-50. Patty: Okay. We’re going to pick up our solder basically in just, maybe unravel 8 inches or so. Female: Okay. Patty: One pound roll and we’re going to hold our soldering fillers and kind of a lefty. And for right now we’re going to do is we’re just kind of temporarily hold our pieces together at each of the intersection so they don’t shift around as we’re soldering. Female: Right. Patty: So we’re going to do is called step cold tack on them. Female: So I go right here in the middle? Patty: Okay. Just slept it down. Female: Wow. That is amazing. Patty: Okay, don’t panic. Don’t pull it just apply the heat from your soldering iron back there and take your solder away, okay. Great. Female: Alright now Patty we are one step closer, we’ve done all of the tacking and then the bead work. You’ve actually added a couple of hooks so you can put a chain and then hang this in the window. Now the final step we’re going to do is adding a petino? Patty: Right. Female: So tell me about that and why you would do that step? Patty: Petinoing is actually just a step that you would do to antique this, you could really very much, if you like the silver to color or solder you can keep it the silver color and then just polish it with the different colors of petino and make colors pop. We’ll just going to wet a small portion of our rag. Female: And immediate effect that you can see? Patty: Exactly. So you can see the colors pop right out. Female: It’s like a magic. Alright now so here is our finished piece being displayed beautifully here at the glass gallery. What do you think? Patty: I think we did a great job, good team. Female: So if you want to does something like this, come to Nutley to the Glass Gallery and you can make your very own stain glass window. The Glass Gallery opens its doors in the late 80’s and since then it is almost becoming a static land mark in the quaint community of Nutley. Patty’s little shop is weathered many economic tumbles, mainly because of her undying dedication to her art and her sincere commitment to teaching and passing on the beautiful tradition of stained glass mosaics.