Life informs artist's work
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Laura Rideout works on a piece of stained glass art in her studio in Brandon. Rideout owns Art on a Whim on Prospect Street. ALBERT J. MARRO / RUTLAND HERALD |
Toolbox
Published: August 2, 2007
Even for the most experienced artists, patience and fearlessness are part of the creative process. Patience for the time it takes to visualize the final product and fearlessness for the ability to plunge ahead with the art making, though unsure of the results.
Stained glass artist Laura Rideout of Brandon combines those attributes with the conceptual skills her parents helped develop as a girl growing up in Nebraska.
She recalls being given a blanket and being told by her parents to lie down outside and look up at the clouds.
"I was told to see what I could see," recounts Rideout, standing in the entrance of the Vermont home she shares with her husband, Scott.
That early encouragement to daydream and to take advantage of opportunities is evident in the stained glass that hangs neatly along the top of every window in the Rideouts' home.
Rideout describes herself as a self-taught stained glass artist. But also, a self-taught stained glass artist whose work incorporates a still-unfolding life. For just as a writer brings to the page the experiences that shape one's life, so does the artist.
Rideout does with color and design what Ansel Adams did with black and white: Her work is distinctive and recognizable.
From growing up in Nebraska to attending college in Montana to earning a living as a fisherman in Alaska (where she met Scott) to relocating to Vermont, these experiences add to the breadth of knowledge she brings to her art.
Rideout arranges pieces of glass — some colored, some clear, some smooth, some textured — to form a coherent whole.
The glass pieces come together to reveal the most delicate of objects, such as a tender, purple iris or a flittering hummingbird or a watchful raven. Thin wire-framed glass dragonflies hang from windows along with rectangular stained glass planes. Or, also in the windows, an asymmetrical, anything-but-plain white cloud.
"It's kind of wide open, what you can do," she said.
Rideout traces her interest in art and clouds to the days she spent purposefully sky gazing.
"This marked the beginning of my life as an avid cloud watcher and became the inspiration for my original stained glass artwork I call 'clouds,'" her Web site states. "I hope these clouds bring you as much pleasure to look at, to 'see what you can see,' as I did in creating them. Each cloud is unique and individually handcrafted."
She accentuates and highlights the varying shades and textures in her work with sea glass, driftwood, coral, barnacles, shells and letter-embossed bottle bottoms.
"Tongass Rain Forest Cloud" is one of her newest pieces and one of her most spectacular. Mottled green glass combines with glass bottle bottoms and bumpy but translucent glass to reveal Rideout's vision of her favorite art theme.
She allows herself the freedom to alter a piece in progress despite the numbered sections previously laid out along a table, similar to a jigsaw puzzle or paint-by-number project.
"They just kind of happen," she said of some stained glass works.
And she's not afraid to disassemble a finished piece if it doesn't pass muster.
Scott Rideout and his friend, Bob Read, remodeled the attic in the Rideouts' East Prospect Street home into a studio for Laura. Along one wall, cardboard boxes are neatly arranged, each containing horizontal rows of glass, separated by color and clarity.
"It's very expensive, but it's worth it. It just changes with the light," she said, holding a duo-toned, textured glass sample near an attic window.
A portable sink is at an opposite end of the track-lit studio. The desk at which she stands was purposely chosen to make it easier for the nearly 5-feet-two-inched, curly haired Rideout to comfortably and efficiently work.
The pliers, leadless solder, wire and appropriately-sized chains for hanging glass works are within an arm's reach. A futon is opposite the desk for times even the most energetic craftsperson needs a break.
On this morning, she's ready to work. The chosen colored glass piece is laid over a pencil drawing. The drawing is divided into numbered sections so she will know what cut piece of glass goes where. The pencil lines show through the glass. With a steady but delicate hand, she traces the crescent moon-shaped blue glass with a razor-sharp cutter, similar to an X-acto knife. She taps the glass with a scorer to separate the edges and uses running pliers to encircle the scored shape and confidently snap the blue moon shape apart from the original glass piece.
The edges of the now-freed crescent moon are ground smooth with a small grinder. She wraps a quarter-inch copper foil tape around every edge. A burnisher dragged along the copper foil wrapped edges eliminates any air bubbles. Rideout dips a small paintbrush into a shot glass. The brush tip pulls up a dab of clear, gelatinous flux.
Flux goes on all edges of the foil-wrapped glass before soldering. The solder heats and fuses the copper tape to the piece's edges. The solder turns the edges where the copper foil lay into a silver color.
Rideout carries the crescent moon to the sink. The silver is antiqued with a black patina, so the edges of the piece become black in color. This is also known as creating stained glass projects by the Tiffany method, akin to Tiffany glass-shaded lamps.
Her favorite stained glass works are not the most profitable She balances the stained glass pieces she likes to create with projects and commissions.
When she's not in her studio, Rideout works at the Brandon Medical Center.
It's not many people who can say they met their spouse by accident in Alaska and owned and operated a commercial salmon troller and long-lined for halibut off the southeast Alaskan coast. Laura and Scott lived in a wall tent in a tree, at one point, running a salmon weir north of Juneau.
"There was a bear den right behind us, a gorgeous cinnamon-colored bear," she wrote in an e-mail. "The bear was more interested in catching fish than catching us. It was after that summer we moved to Petersburg. That winter we sold the car and bought a salmon troll permit and so it began, with a honeymoon of long-lining for halibut and a summer of trolling for salmon."
Scott Rideout's Vermont roots brought the couple to New England. He studied biology and liberal arts at Johnson State College in Johnson. His sister, Beth, is married to Bernie Carr, proprietor of Carr's Florist and Gifts.
"I feel so blessed to be here," Laura Rideout said, walking outside to the backyard, as much to herself as to the two visitors to her home.
The "Tongass Rain Forest Cloud" will be on display and for sale during September at Pittsford's Maclure Library as part of the Third Annual Home Grown and Hand Made Harvest Fair. Proceeds from the fair's events will go to the Bowen-Walker Fund. Established in 1884 and administered today through two churches in Pittsford, the fund aids Pittsford and Florence residents facing an emergency financial crisis.
Visitors to Rideout's Art on a Whim studio are welcome and window shopping is allowed. To learn more about her work, click on http://mysite.verizon.net/lrideout2. Or, by e-mail contact Laura Rideout at lrideout2@verizon.net.
Contact Lisa Connell at lisa.connell@rutlandherald.com.
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