As far as I can tell, stained glass work seems to be best approached as a solo sport. Come to think of it, I can't really come up with any examples of a visual art form that generally works better when done by teams instead of individuals, but the methodicalness, precision and concentration required to do stained glass, plus the sometimes wildly diverging array of techniques employed, makes it seem likely that any effort at group glassing would quickly... um, go to pieces.

Glass quilting presents an interesting exception. It's just what it sounds like: putting together a big project using many smaller, individual panels. The Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists has been doing community quilts since 1994. In these quilts, members are invited to complete a specified pattern for inclusion in the finished quilt. More recently, the global stained glass community (who knew?) pitched in to create a "Colorado Fire Quilt". The project was conceived as a charity effort to benefit people who lost their homes in Colorado wildfires this past summer, and differs from the ASGLA quilts in that each of its panels was unique. The theme was Colorado woodlands, wildlife, or flowers, and each contributing artist designed his or her own 6-inch-square panel. You can view those online (the password for the guest login is cac2002).

The organizers' original plan was to set a late-August deadline for finished panels, then assemble them into one "quilt" for sale on eBay in September. They did receive sixty-some panels by August's end, but found that some had broken in transit. The need for pre-assembly repair work has pushed out their timeframe for the auction, but it's expected to hit eBay soon.

It sounds like it was a fun project, and hopefully will prove profitable as well. A five-foot-by-four glass project done by one artist would be a pricey commission, but doing it as a quilt allowed all the contributing artists to share the cost and have a little bit of creative fun to boot.

I wish I could find a little more more information on glass quilting (is this something a lot of groups do? would it be at all feasible done with panels in shapes other than square? does everybody have to agree on specific techniques beforehand or could you, say, mix lead-came and copper-foil panels?), but alas, it turns out that there is a technique for actual fabric quilts called "stained glass quilting". Poor Google is simply overrun.

Posted by Michelle on October 24, 2002 08:40 AM