In the summer of 2021 I received an inquiry for a custom stained glass window of a woman's face.  It was to be built specifically for a space that was to be cut out of a door and placed inside, with backlight for illumination.  The client, Katerina Minevich, wanted to see her design turned into a stained glass window and decided I was the man for the job.​

 

During my consultation I learned that she was a graphic designer and had quite a bit of expertise in the field, and had even hired a stained glass artist to make some small windows for her kitchen cabinets using her designs.  I also learned that the stained glass window she was commissioning me to make would go in her kitchen closet door, adding to her "stained glass kitchen" collection.  I really liked that she had experience designing stained glass windows and it gave me confidence that she already had an advantage when developing the design.​

 

The design she chose for the kitchen closet window space was that of a side view of a woman's face and shoulder.  When she showed it to me the first time, I was pleasantly surprised.  It seemed as if she had designed it specifically for glass from the beginning.  The face, hair, and shoulder were already segmented into pieces I could easily make from stained glass, and it required almost no alterations aside from adding some slight line breaks.  The style she used in this particular window is similar to a style popularized by the artist Tom Fedro, which includes side views of women's faces, broken up into large single-colored pieces in an abstract cubist fashion.  Pablo Picasso also helped popularize this style throughout his career.​

 

The project was a major success.  I did not want our association to end, as I could see a lot of potential in these types of designs.  I asked Katerina to be a collaborative partner and she accepted.  Now she continues to make these designs for me in the same style.  I'm very happy with her designs and their easy translation to stained glass, and hope our partnership lasts.  She titled the first window "Anais Bleue" and has continued to give each a title of a woman's name including a color in a different language.