As an elementary school student, Lynne Provance was fascinated by watching the light play through the stained-glass windows in her church.
Always a creative, Provance has spent her career involved in both visual and performing arts. About 20 years ago, while living on Prince Edward Island in Canada, she took a class in creating stained-glass art and stumbled upon her next passion.
“When I was cutting my first pieces of glass, I said, ‘Oh, this is so cool! You can do this and you're not going to cut yourself,’” Provance said. “It's my art form. It's my visual art form. And that's what led me into this.”
Sheets of stained glass are arranged in boxes lining the walls of her studio. Every single piece is unique, she explained, because of variations in bubbles, lines and textures. Much like a brush creates movement with colors on a canvas, Provance uses the lines in certain styles of glass to paint.
“As opposed to just sticking a color in a design with a geometric shape, I want to express myself with the textures and the colors through painting with it in my designs,” she said. “That makes me really aware in terms of how I’m designing my pieces.”
Provance begins with a design on paper that looks a lot like a paint-by-number pattern. The image is broken down into shapes and individually numbered, then cut into pieces.
She then traces the outline of each piece on sheets of stained glass with a marker and begins cutting along the lines.
Next, copper foil is wrapped carefully around the edges of each shape, another time-consuming step in the process. When all the wrapped pieces are assembled into the design like a puzzle, they’re soldered together.
After many years spent perfecting her own craft, Provance has found joy teaching others the process of creating stained-glass art.
“I love teaching it to watch how people work,” she said. “I like collaborations with people. That to me is interesting and fascinating because I find people interesting and fascinating.”
Provance is now the stained-glass instructor at Trumbull Art Gallery in Downtown Warren, where she connected with the gallery’s education chair, Sue Senvissky, to begin offering workshops to the community.
“She’s always wanted to teach a class, and it took us a while to figure out how best to do it,” Senvissky said. “We discovered this way where she makes the pieces at home and brings them in, and we put them together.”
When signing up for a workshop, participants get to choose the design they’d like to create, along with the colors of glass.
Senvissky, who is also an art instructor at the gallery, has participated in three of Provance’s stained glass workshops.
“I've learned that it looks very detailed, but anybody can do it,” she said. “Everybody uses their own style, and there's no mistakes in art. Everybody's piece is unique and creative.”
Geraldine Bray of Hubbard attended a recent workshop. She’s also a repeat participant and enjoys the meditative nature of the stained-glass process.
“It's one of those times when you can just turn your mind off and just focus on what you're doing,” Bray said. “I can just focus on me and what's going on right in front of me. I really love that.”
And Provance loves it too – sharing her passion for stained glass and experiencing the joy of watching others learn a centuries-old artform.
