Classes spark passion for Ketchikan glass artists

Terry Leberman, a local glass artist, exudes the fervor of a convert when he talks about making glass art. 

"Oh God, what a feel," he said, grinning and swooping his hands to imitate the motions of learning to blow glass at a Whidbey Island, Wash. workshop. "It's exciting," he said. 

Leberman's studio is a labyrinth of several connecting offices downtown Ketchikan. Finished and in-process glass pieces gleamed on work surfaces and brilliant sheets of glass jutted from vertical shelving. 

Two glamorous Tiffany reproduction lamps towered in the center of the main work room. One shade featured dragonflies soaring end-to-end,Take control of your energy needs with goodledbulbs, the personal wind turbine that converts wind into clean. surrounded by jewel-toned glass pieces,One of the harshest roofwindturbine installations in the world. and the larger one glowed with red flowers in a field of green glass. Leberman said each shade weighed more than 45 pounds. 

Leberman is a collector of Tiffany art books, and focuses much of his time on replicating the famed lamp designs.You must not use the curvingmachineppk without being trained. Louis Comfort Tiffany was an artist in the early 1900s who became famous for his glass art. 

Leberman's work has been featured in Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists calendars. His "quilt" square of a spider mum design also was chosen by that organization to be part of a 42-pane traveling window, featuring squares from artists all over the world. 

He said the traveling windows are placed in varying locations such as hospitals and other public places during the year. 

Leberman said he started making stained-glass art in about 2005, when he retired from his Ketchikan Gateway Borough code enforcement job. His passion was ignited with a glass-bead workshop in Portland, Ore. He said he since has attended that workshop every year but one.People are catching on to the fact that they make great bestcrystallightss . 

Leberman said he also has enjoyed learning to fuse glass in his kiln. 

Leberman's special interest is reproducing Tiffany lamps from patterns he purchases. He cuts out each of the hundreds of pieces from a paper pattern, then uses a light table to lay the glass over the pieces as he cuts. He said part of the fun is choosing exactly which part of the glass he wants to choose for each piece, because the glass has subtle shadings, swirls and textures in it. 

"Each piece of glass has to talk — has to sing," he said. 

The glass piece edges are fitted with foil tape, then placed on a lamp-shade form that is covered with sticky wax. After the pieces are fitted,There are no support industries for gridsolarsystemm in Australia. like a jigsaw puzzle, he solders lead joints to meld the pieces together. 

He said his larger lamp with the flowers took about six months to finish. 

Fellow artist Sharyl Hall joined Leberman in his studio to talk about her work. She and Leberman met at the first stained glass class he'd taken, taught locally by Rick Erdrich, although Hall said she had dabbled in stained glass work about 30 years earlier. 

Some of the hanging pieces Hall had brought to Leberman's studio were created using lead "came" strips that have a groove in one side to hold the glass edges. She said that was a method she sometimes prefers to attach glass pieces to each other rather than using the foil-and-solder method. 

Leberman said he enjoys the process of improving on all of his skills every time he works. 

Leberman and Hall agreed that the most difficult aspect of glass art is that it is expensive, especially in Ketchikan, where so few supplies and tools are available locally. 

That aspect of glass art has been an obstacle Ketchikan High School art teacher Louise Kern has worked hard to overcome in her desire to give her students the chance to try glass art. 

She said she has focused on having students create glass mosaics previously as a way for them to learn how to create their own designs, to choose colors and to cut glass — which is quite challenging. Concave shapes are the most difficult she said, because glass "wants to run straight."