Home Is Where the Dragon Is

Just a quick note:  Many of the pictures have another picture underneath.
If you slide your mouse over the image the other picture will appear.

Thank you so much for visiting my website. Here you'll find images and the stories behind them ranging in time from
1979 to the present day and organized generally into the five main categories you see listed as pages across the top of each
page and also at the bottom.  Clicking on one of these links will take you to that collection.
All of these stained glass projects were assembled using what is known as the copper foil technique.  Each piece of glass
was cut and fitted and then its edges were wrapped in copper foil and when they were all ready, the foil was soldered together producing a single network of metal that holds the colored glass together.
There is a great deal of freedom in this method and a great deal of fun.  Fun and hard work are not mutually exclusive
pursuits...  so here's the deal:  the artist does all the hard work and YOU get the fun!   Now.. on to the dragons!

I'm hungry!
For some unknown reason  all but one of my dragons are in either the kitchen, the pantry or the dining room, and that one exception  is a folding screen  quite frequently resting on a buffet which just happens to be, you guessed it,  in the dining room.  They always seem to act like growing teenagers..... "What's for dinner? and When can I have it"

The nature of stained glass when it is properly installed in its own hole in the wall is that it makes the whole house its frame.  The architecture holds the glass so that light from outside can shine through it and illumine the interior. Because of this architectural nature, the image rests exactly at the boundary of two worlds, inside and out.

Soooooo....  if we want, we can put a REAL dragon there instead of just a picture of one.   We can make him hang onto the window frame or peek through the security bars.  Now if you or I were peeking into someone's house in the San Francisco Bay Area and the 49'ers or the Raiders are NOT on  the TV  then its  a pretty strong bet that we are checking out either the food or the wine being served.  Hmmmmm...  I guess there's a little dragon in each of us!

 
Norman

Norman was commissioned to sit at the head of a dining room
table about 2 blocks from the US Capitol in
 Washington DC.
~ o ~

Fran and Frisco

One of the interesting challenges that these two young dragons presented is that they must be seen from both sides, that is from both the kitchen and the outer room. This is unusual because stained glass is normally enjoyed from just one side... It has a front and a back.... Below you can see our hungry teenagers from the outer room. When you slide the mouse over the picture, you see them from the kitchen.

In case you are wondering just what exactly Frisco is showing us....One of the most important moments in any teenager's life is the moment he acquires his license! Little pieces of plastic just don't last very long around dragons so the state of California issues them on a scroll of asbestos...(Yes, they did indeed have to obtain a variance from the EPA.)

T'sid N'i

Pronounced Sidney!  (This is the Chinese spelling.
He is, after all a Chinese water dragon.) In this
picture he is about to host a dinner in the dining
room of Katharine Cebrian on Scott Street
 in San Francisco.
~ o ~

Francois

Francois here is checking out the pantry of a home in Pacific Heights in San Francisco.  He was recently moved to a new home in Vancouver BC.
~ o ~