Kathy Dalrymple transforms shards of glass into sparking vessels.

Photograph by Ashlee Watson

A Piece-ful Art

Weatheford Mosaic Artist 'Paints With Glass'

By Ashlee Watson
Texan News Service
Sunlight pours through a window and fractured colors glitter on walls and dance across the room. Wildflowers, oak trees and Texas flags come to life when rays of light hit them.
From a distance the images look whole, but they’re not. These inventive optical illusions are actually pieces of colored, broken glass carefully positioned together by mosaic artist Kathy Dalrymple of Weatherford.
Dalrymple described her art as “like painting with glass.”
“The glass actually creates the image, so I may have something in mind that I want to do,” Dalrymple explained. “But when I actually break the glass, it may do something totally different, but it might be even better than what I had in mind.”
Wisconsin-born—although she considers herself to be a true Texan, having moved here as an infant—the lively 59-year-old mother of five and grandmother began her artistic streak at an early age when she began to draw trees.
“It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Dalrymple said. “When I was a little kid, both of my parents worked, so my sister and I stayed with a lady that kept children. She kept a number of kids, so one of the activities was to pass out all the paper and crayons and we’d sit there and draw.”
The woman told Dalrymple she was really good at drawing. “I’m sure I was no better than any other little kid,” the artist said. “But when someone tells you that you’re good at something, that may be the event that channels you toward what you’re going to do. It’s kind of ironic when I think about it because the pieces I’ve gotten the most response to seem to be trees.”
Dalrymple received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Cameron University in Lawton, Okla. She specialized in printmaking, specifically serigraphy or silkscreen printmaking. But she never viewed her own work as exceptional.

"Through the years I’ve done all different kinds of art, and I’m pretty good,” Dalrymple said. “I can draw with a pencil or charcoal. I can paint. I can do watercolors or pastels, and people look at it and say, ‘Ya know, that’s pretty nice.’ But I know I’ll never be the best oil painter or the best pastel artist.”

Dalrymple began experimenting with glass shards and mosaics six years ago by making garden stepping stones. At first she used a pair of tile nippers to clip broken dishes.
“I would see a flower or something that I wanted to keep for the image, and it was real hard to get it to work that way,” she said. “I’d almost get it cut around it (the image), and it (the piece) would split right down the middle every time. By the end of the day, I had the biggest darn blisters on my hand, and I thought, ‘Ya know, this isn’t fun. I don’t know why anyone thinks this is fun.’”
Shortly after, she decided to use stained glass instead of dishes. She found that the glass clipped apart easier and she also enjoyed the light shining through the glass.

“I told my sister, ‘Ya know, I bet I could make something that looks like a Tiffany’s stained glass window,’ and she said, ‘No, you can’t.’” As it turned out, Dalrymple could, but that would come later on after she developed her own methods and styles of creating stained glass art.

At first, she stuck the pieces of glass to a glass window using standard Elmer’s Glue and grouted it like a tiny tile floor. “My Elmer’s Glue windows hang in our cabin in Colorado,” she said. The cabin is for sale, but the windows will stay. “So, somebody’s gonna get my Elmer’s Glue windows that someday will be worth a whole bunch of money because, well, they’re my first Elmer’s Glue windows!” Dalrymple said.

Since her days of Elmer’s Glue, Dalrymple’s technique and style evolved. She now uses clear silicone to glue the pieces to the glass. She also incorporates layers of glass to her pieces, uses enamel paint between layers and experiments with types of glass, such as vintage rhinestones, beads, dichroic glass (a type of reflective glass that appears to be two or more colors depending on the light), scrap glass and shards. What she doesn’t have in her own collection of scraps, she buys on eBay.

“I don’t throw anything away,” Dalrymple said. “For about the first four years I was doing this, when I would nip little pieces out I would save all the tiny shards. Well, I started making trees out of them, and people started buying them faster than I could make them.”
Although her artistic focus now is primarily stained glass windows, Dalrymple also makes vases, votives, lizards, glass balls and other decorative pieces. Despite her Wisconsin roots, she draws most of her inspiration from Texas culture.

“Most of my designs are Texas-based,” she says. “I do a lot of wildflowers, oak trees and yuccas. I’ve done deer; I’ve done quail. So mostly it’s just Texas-inspired stuff. But then I also do some other things. Usually, I just start designing something. I don’t sit down and think about it ahead of time.”
Dalrymple also works on commission pieces that are specific sizes, colors and subjects. “The problem I run into with commission is the less people understand about the way I work, the more they want to see what it’s gonna look like before it’s made,” she said. “But there is no drawing (to show them). I’ve always told people, ‘If you’re not happy with it, you don’t have to take it.’”

Aside from creating her own art work, Dalrymple also teaches others how to make their own stained glass windows in a continuing education class she conducts through the Weatherford Independent School District.

“If I don’t feel like I can share with you how I make this and still do something artistic on my own, then I ain’t much of an artist,” she says. “You just stick glass to glass with silicone and grout it. That’s all there is to it.…
“I should be able to say, ‘This is how you make one of these little trees. But my tree won’t look like your tree,’” she continued. “And hopefully I’ll continue to evolve and come up with new ideas and do different things, so it doesn’t matter if you know what I do or how I do it.”
Dalrymple also sells supplies and constructs pre-made kits for people who want to make their own stained glass windows but do not have the time or the know-how to create their own pattern.
“It’s kinda like working on a puzzle,” she said. “If somebody likes to put a puzzle together, they’ll like doing this because you just sit there and glue the pieces.”
Her windows are displayed in several places across the state, including Mills County Historical Museum, the Texas State Capital, August E’s Restaurant in Fredericksburg and the Artisans at Rocky Hill gallery, also in Fredricksburg, where her work is displayed and sold. So far this year, Artisans at Rocky Hill has sold 18 of Dalrymple’s pieces, ranging in price from $295 to $1,000, depending on the size. She has also been featured at Studio 2600 in Dallas.

Most of Dalrymples pieces are 24 by 36 inches or smaller and take her up to a week to make.
“When I finish a piece, I usually immediately take pictures, I put it on my Web site, and I send the pictures to whoever it’s for or to the gallery,” she said. “Then I let it sit in the window, and I’ll look at it for a couple of days, and then I’ll go back and change things.”
Dalrymple said she likes the endurance of what she creates. “One of the fascinating things to me about both mosaics and stained glass is they’re so permanent,” she explained. “You could have this exposed to sunlight for 300 years, and it’s still gonna look exactly the same. It’s not gonna change.”
Even though it took a while for her to find her artistic calling, Dalrymple has found her niche in the Texas art community, and, much like her mosaics, the pieces gradually fell together.
Kathy Dalrymple’s artwork can be seen on her personal Web site, http://kathleendalrymple-glassartist.blogspot.com/ and at the Artisans at Rocky Hill Web site, http://www.artisansatrockyhill.com/.

The Texan News Service is a project of the journalism program at Tarleton State University in Stephenville. Contact us at texannews@tarleton.edu