Stained glass offers new creative outlet for On Track students

The stained glass classes at the On Track Academy in north Spokane started because school staff wanted to offer something unique to their students. Since then, students in the program have produced award-winning designs, and they’re now launching a new collaboration with students at Spokane Falls Community College to create several stained glass windows that will be sold.

On Track teacher Erin Bangle said she met SFCC professor and local artist Carl Richardson when he came to visit her school and they two started talking. “We thought it would be cool to have our students work on a project,” she said.

The students in Bangle’s advanced stained glass class and Richardson’s advanced design class have been working together for a few weeks, meeting in person and via Zoom. Richardson’s students produced the designs for the windows and Bangle’s students will spend the next few weeks creating them.

The seven stained glass windows will go on display at several local libraries, including the branches at Hillyard, Liberty Park and Shadle Park, in May. At that time, information will be made available on how to purchase the windows through an auction. The auction winners will be announced on June 15.

Bangle said she learned stained glass techniques from a neighbor when she was a child. She suggested she dust off her cutting, designing and soldering skills to teach the class. “It’s so popular with the kids,” she said. “The kids love it. It’s clear that this is why they’re here. I have to kick them out of my room sometimes.”

Student Claire Kazel is a junior who first signed up for stained glass last fall. “It takes a long time to learn,” she said. “You can’t learn it in a day.”

When she signed up for the class, Kazel said she wasn’t sure if she would like it but found herself hooked on the first day. “I have had no other artistic experience before this,” she said. “The first day, Erin showed up some of her work. It was super inspiring.”

She said she found soldering, using heated metal to join pieces together, the most difficult. “It’s very hot,” she said. “It’s 900 degrees. I think at first it was just fear.”

Kazel said she loves all the different types of glass, which have varying thickness, color and texture. In fact, there are so many choices that she has to plan her pieces out in advance. “It can be overwhelming, definitely, to pick out what you want to do,” she said.

She said she plans to take the class again next year. “It’s a unique art form,” she said. “After that I think I still want to do something with glass. It’s become one of my passions.”

Senior Najahna Smith said she thought she’d try the stained art class after taking drawing and painting at Lewis and Clark High School. “I like art a lot,” she said. “It was something different. When I tried it, I just loved it.”

She particularly likes the freedom she has to bring together glass of different colors and textures. She used the skills she learned to enter a piece into the Holocaust Art Contest that is held every year in Spokane to observe the Holocaust. She won first place in the high school division.

The large stained glass piece, titled “Faded,” features the trunks of several birch trees. The color of the trunks start out vibrant and strong and then gradually fade and wash out as the trunks are replicated several times. The fading of color is meant to represent how the memories of the Holocaust have faded and become less potent.

Smith said her piece was inspired by Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the concentration camps in Germany. Birkenau is German for birch grove and many of the camps were surrounded by birch groves meant to hide what was happening inside their fences, Smith said. Accordingly, she unobtrusively put a smoke stack and fences in her piece that at first simply blend into the tree trunks and the background.

“People’s memories and knowledge of what happened behind those trees is fading,” she said. “I want my piece to remind and educate people about what victims experienced and be inspired to change the world so it does not happen to others.”

Senior Rachel Peterson has also been working with stained glass since September. “I’d never heard about it before I came here,” she said. “I just fell in love with it. I like how it’s different than other mediums. I do like that it’s more technical. You have to use tools and stuff.”

In January she entered a piece she called “Innocent Ruminations” into an ESD 101 art show. It included a fairy sitting on a toadstool and Peterson said she thought the piece was like a child’s imagination. “I just started drawing stuff I thought would look cool in a piece,” she said. “It was really fun to make. I got to use some pretty cool glass.”

Her piece won first place in the 3D Art category and also the Avista Choice Award and the People’s Choice Award. She plans to use her prize money to create a studio at her home and start creating commissioned pieces while she studies art education at Whitworth University. Her goal is to become an art teacher.

Bangle speaks about her students’ accomplishments like a proud parent. “They do such good work,” she said. “I’m so proud of them.”