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Cold or hot, colored or clear, glass frames our view of the world whether we look through lenses to read or through
windows to see outside. Inside a trio of glass studios, the raw materials have been elevated to an art medium.
Come along as we explore the process of stained glass, kiln-fused glass and hand-blown glass.
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A dolphin sun catcher, a fan
light, a stained glass window
of the Cape Hatteras
Lighthouse — these were
Susan Tharin’s first three projects, made during
one class sponsored by the Wrightsville
Beach Parks and Recreation Department 18
years ago.
Many of her works since then have been
architectural: custom-made kitchen cabinet
doors, transom windows, for example. Still,
others are purely decorative: Tiffany-style
lamps, mosaic gazing balls, garden stepping
stones, bottle trees, birdbaths.
Today, on the second floor above her
Airlie Road studio, she has laid out the puzzle
pieces of her biggest challenge to date,
the fabrication of a stained glass church
window originally designed and created by
world renowned stained glass artist, Rowan
LeCompte.
How Susan met Rowan is a story itself,
dating back a decade ago.
The man who has designed and built
stained glass windows for the National
Cathedral in Washington, DC, lived for a brief
period in Wilmington, where he created four
church panels depicting the seasons of the
year for the First Baptist Church chapel on
Fifth Street and the stained glass oculus for
the Cameron Museum of Art on 17th Street.
One day in 2001 Susan received a phone
call from Rowan. He was out of tacky wax
and thought she might have some. During
their conversation she invited him to attend
the Piney Woods Festival in which she was
exhibiting. On the day of the show, she
had stepped away from her booth when he
arrived, said her mother. Rowan promised to
return and when he did, Susan says he told
her, “I’ve walked around and there are several
glass people here but you are the only
one with an eye.”
In 2002, Susan became Rowan’s fabricator
for a set of windows he designed for a small
church in Rhode Island.
“As the fabricator you take the original
drawing, make a copy of it, cut the pattern
out,” Susan explains. “He would pick out the
colors, I would cut the glass and make it fit.
He paints the glass, gives it all back to me
and I actually put the window together with
the leading, the cementing.”
Two years later, in 2004, they began
their collaboration on a window that will
be installed this year at the Church of
the Servant on Oriole Drive. The window
will incorporate Rowan LeCompte’s hand
painted stained glass panels made for an
Episcopal Church in Virginia in the 1950s.
When that church burned, his work was
salvaged and eventually returned to him in
pieces. Now that the 87-year-old LeCompte
suffers from symptoms associated with
Alzheimer’s disease, Tharin is his hands and
his eyes.
The complex task includes designing and
fabricating borders and painting on stained
glass. Propped up against her studio’s
sunlit windows are LeCompte’s originals.
Downstairs at her work bench where she
scores, breaks, grinds, washes, wraps, cleans
and waxes her stained glass puzzle pieces is
another LeCompte, a portrait of Jesus Christ.
When he gifted the work to Susan she told
him, “I’m going to hang it up and pretend
it’s you watching me.”
Susan Tharin frequently donates her work
for charities and retails her pieces at Blue
Moon Gift Shops on Racine Drive.
Art Trio
Stained
glass
A master craftsman enlists
the help of local artist
Susan Tharin
by Marimar McNaughton | photography by Allison Potter