N

From a red pickup truck hauling a load of pumpkins to a large work featuring hot air balloons in flight, stained glass artist Barbara Keen has been crafting these colorful works of art for the last 20 years.

Keen said she first got an interest in making stained glass art about 20 years ago.

“I had a friend that does it for churches and she also teaches classes,” Keen said. “I decided to take a class and after that, that was it.”

While Keen lives just outside Tullahoma, she has been selling her products at Manchester’s Foothills Crafts for about 15 years.

Keen’s stained glass works range greatly in both subject matter and scale, but each piece starts out the same way – with an idea.

“It starts with a picture,” she said. “Sometimes I just see something and others I just draw a picture and then you determine the colors and you have to cut each piece of glass.”

Keen utilizes several tools to craft her stained glass works, ranging from hand tools like a glass cutter and soldering iron to more advanced pieces of equipment such as various grinders and a ring saw used for more advanced work.

After cutting out each individual piece of glass, the edges of each piece must be ground smooth before a layer of copper is applied around the perimeter of each piece. Next, the glass pieces are laid out into their proper pattern before being soldered together. The last step is applying a patina finish to the soldered copper pieces to darken the metal.

The amount of time she spends crafting the pieces each week has a lot to do with how well the items she has placed for sale at Foothills Crafts have been sold.

“It all depends on how much I sell because otherwise I would be just loaded up,” Keen said. “Right now, I haven’t been back in a while so I know I needed some pieces.”

Keen said when she brings new pieces into the store, she will look to see if any of her larger-scale stained glass has been purchased, and then come back to her studio and start coming up with ideas for new large pieces.

“I don’t like doing the same big ones, so I will have to figure out something else to do,” she said.

Keen said she also accepts commissions for larger stained glass pieces, such as windows in a home.

“Usually what I do is when they tell me what they want I will ask them to come over and I will do a sketch and we will see if we both agree, then I know what they want and the colors and everything,” she said.

For those thinking about trying their hand at making stained glass art, Keen said it is best to first get a few lessons from someone who knows the ins and outs of the craft.

“Some people can pick it up very quickly and other people find out very quickly this is not what they want to do,” Keen said. “Number one, you are going to get cut. You might as well count on it, you are going to get cut.”

Keen said as you gain experience, the cuts typically become less.

Another important skill for any stained glass artist is working with a soldering iron. Keen said she had experience with the tool doing electronic service work, and that experience has come in handy.

“You don’t want to waste good glass,” she said. “Take a little piece of glass, wrap it, solder it and then let off and do it again until you know how to solder.”

Keen said when it comes down to it, what she enjoys most about working with stained class is coming up with new ideas and seeing them become a finished work.

“I sort of enjoy doing different things,” she said. “It is a challenge each time.”