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Winona company makes glass into art
by
Cathy Wurzer, Minnesota Public
Radio
November 26, 2006
Winona isn't the largest town in Minnesota, but it has a big reputation as
the stained glass capital of the United States. Winona is the home of no
less than six stained glass companies, including the largest such firm in
the nation -- the Willet Hauser Architectural Glass Studio.
Willet Hauser's artisans have created or restored stained glass windows for
churches and public spaces across the country, from the National Cathedral
in Washington D.C. to the New York City subway system.
Winona, Minn. — The whine of a grinder mixes with the staccato notes of a
hammer, chipping away fragments from thick chunks of glass.
"You gotta have the angles right," says Steve Giebel, one of the 70 or so
artists at the Willet Hauser company. He's here, at the Winona studios.
There's another facility in Philadelphia.
Giebel looks like he's working on a huge, multi-colored jigsaw puzzle --
taking slabs of glass, cutting them into various sizes, and then paring away
the edges with his special hammer to make sure they fit into the design.
The glass pieces have angles cut into them, much like a jewel would, which
catches the light. Thick, black epoxy will be poured over the glass pieces
to hold them together in a mosaic.
Giebel is working on a table-sized segment of a glass panel that'll soon be
a part of the daily commute of many New Yorkers. The work of art will be
installed in one of the many New York transit stations that are being
remodeled.
Jim Hauser and his company have been playing a key part in those
renovations.
"I
think we've done 26 or 27 projects so far," says Hauser. "We've got four or
five stations in the studio right now, and we're negotiating for a sixth
one."
The task for the Willet Hauser glass artists? Taking the works of painters
and illustrators selected for the "Arts for Transit" program, and
transforming them into glass. At first, it wasn't an easy job.
"We were getting designs from people who had never done faceted glass. I'd
start tearing my hair out and say, 'We can't do that in faceted glass, it is
too limiting,'" Hauser says. "We had to spend so much time educating people
as to the way it would go, but, we found out that there was a synergy, we
learned from each other."
One of the New York artists visiting the Winona studios is Takayo Noda. She
illustrates children's books.
"This is a picture of a crocus and butterflies," Noda explains as she
describes one of her illustrations. The picture on paper is going to become
a vibrant, faceted glass mosaic for a subway station in Brooklyn.
Noda says creating something for glass instead of paint required her to
rethink her art.
"Paint is on the paper, and the glass -- you have to see through sunlight,
so I have to really adjust my concept of a color," she says.
Noda also had to adjust her geographic compass, when she found out her
illustrations would come to life in the small town of Winona, Minnesota.
Which begs the question -- why is the country's largest stained glass
company in Winona, along with a number of other art glass firms? The answer
lies with Jim Hauser's dad, who started the business after World War II,
repairing stained glass windows in small churches.
"My father could never cut a piece of glass in his life. He was an
entrepreneur, a businessman," explains Hauser. "He saw an opportunity, a
business opportunity, is what it boiled down to."
The business grew to include the purchase of the venerable Willet glass
studios of Philadelphia in the 1970s.
The smaller glass studios in Winona were founded, mainly, by former Willet
Hauser workers.
The New York transit system project is one of the biggest for Willet Hauser.
Its artisans have been working on this project for the past eight years, and
the steady stream of business has translated into revenue for the company of
more than $500,000 over those years, with more to come.
"In the spring, I'm definitely going out there and will ride the subways
with my camera!" Hauser says.
In
addition to the transit station glass panel projects, Willet Hauser also
restores and repairs stained glass windows -- including some wonderful and
very valuable Tiffany windows.
As
for the future, Hauser says more public art is being done using faceted
glass. More builders are putting stained glass into private homes. But even
as the business grows, and digital technology makes its way into a
centuries-old art, the craft remains the same.
"Once we get beyond the design stage with a computer, we get into painting
the glass and cutting the glass, the techniques are almost the way they were
a thousand years ago."
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