When the Teacher is Ready

A Buddhist Proverb states "When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears." In this case, when the Teacher was ready, the Students appeared. And this teacher realized that her students were, in fact, her teachers. I received a grant from the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation to teach stained glass and glass mosaic classes in the summer of 2009, and just completed the first round of the classes. Ten wonderful women took the classes, and I learned from every one of them.

I've worked in stained glass since 1980, and this art form became a sort of therapy for me then and over the years. The timeless appeal and the intrinsic beauty of stained glass has enriched my life as an artist and I hoped to encourage others to enjoy glass art through these classes.

When volunteers helped gut my warehouse in Chalmette after the storm, I was amazed to learn that they'd found and cleaned many sheets of glass that were stored there. They also found the first panel I'd designed and completed in 1980 – a rose entwined in the letter “G.” That piece now hangs in my post-K kitchen; it used to hang in my pre-K dining room.

The fact that something as seemingly fragile as glass had survived that wreckage, and that something so valuable to me was found by those volunteers, gave me hope. I'd like to 'pay it forward' with these introductory level classes, and am planning the next round of classes for early fall.