Lisa Westervelt creates and sells stained glass artwork from her studio in the basement of her Ewing home.
The above stained glass fish is an example of Lisa Westervelt’s artwork. She showcases her pieces on Etsy and her own website — The Glass Place on Earth (www.glassplaceonearth.com).
Lisa Westervelt creates and sells stained glass out of the basement of her Ewing home.
By Regina Yorkgitis
For a few hours every day, after Ewing resident Lisa Westervelt cleans the house, works in the garden, has lunch with her husband, feeds the cats and drives her kids to extracurriculars, she retreats to the back corner of her basement to create stained glass art.
“It’s my time,” she said. “It’s personal. It’s where I can be alone with myself.”
Since she first learned how to draw a rose as a child, Westervelt has been an artist. Growing up, she drew tattoos on her childhood friends. She painted portraits of her children when they were babies.
Her home is a museum for her artistic talents, from the postcard inspired mural she painted on the living room wall, to the self-designed hurricane lamp seated on her dining room cabinet. Her latest artistic endeavor is creating stained glass art.
Fourteen years ago, Westervelt’s sister asked her to take a beginner stained glass class with her at Metuchen High School, Westervelt’s alma mater. The stained glass fruits she made in the course still hang on the window over her kitchen sink. As her children grew, so did her passion for the art, although it was not a consistent hobby.
“Some years I didn’t (create stained glass) at all and everything collected dust,” she said.
Cut to November 2007, when Westervelt made stained glass snowflakes and showed them to her family. They encouraged her to try sell them for the holiday season. Hopeful that orders would come flying in, she made tons of snowflakes.
“My aunt bought one snowflake and that was it,” Westervelt laughed. The first attempt to sell her art failed, but she did not give up. She took her snowflakes and some other original designs to a local craft show.
Today, many successful craft shows later, Westervelt showcases her artwork through Etsy and her website “The Glass Place on Earth.”
Friends and craft show goers commission her to make window panels or small trinkets. Often people bring her their broken stained glass in need of repair, which according to Westervelt, is “a common theme. Nobody wants to throw their stained glass away. Their stained glass is special to them.”
An antique window that was given to her rests on a shelf in the basement, waiting for her inspiration to make it shine again.
Anyone can learn the mechanics of creating stained glass, Westervelt said, but the process is an ordeal.
“Nobody understands how much time it takes,” she said.
A beaded cross, her most popular item, can take up to five hours to complete. A larger project, like the intricate 86 piece floral design she is developing for an upcoming art show, requires about eight hours.
The process begins when Westervelt draws a design on paper. She must then select the precise color she wants for each segment. Holding every individual piece up to the overhead light in her basement, she scrutinizes the way the light passes through the tinted glass. Once she approves of the color, she has to shape the piece to fit the frame of her design. A humming machine, called a grinder, is used to file the glass down to size.
“The detail has to be exact otherwise it won’t fit,” Westervelt said. “There has to be some sort of rhyme and reason to it.”
Concentration is key because one false move can alter the piece so much it will not fit into the design.
After the glass is shaped, she wraps a paper thin flexible layer of metal around each fragment. This technique, called foiling, is the step that made Tiffany glass famous.
The pieces then need to be melded together. This step, called soldering, is Westervelt’s least favorite part of the process. (She said it is too smelly and loud for her taste.) With a melting metal, the separate glass sections are bonded together. A patina, a chemical, is applied to the metal and induces a chemical reaction that changes the metal to the desired color.
“Each step is a different mindset,” Westervelt said.
The changing pace of the art is one of the things Westervelt enjoys most about the creation of stained glass.
The Glass Place on Earth might just become a family business someday. Her husband helped her move her home studio from the garage to the basement and purchased several of the different furnishings that she uses to create masterpieces.
“When I’m busy and I have an order, everybody helps out,” she said.
Westervelt’s daughter became her apprentice when she asked her mother to show her how to make a stained glass peace sign. If business takes off, she has promised her son that he can be her accountant.
Westervelt will be displaying her artwork at the Dragonfly Farms craft fair on July 13.
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