Amazing Beauty

I have a little more than a hour to shower, wake/change/feed Nathan and prep all things Nathan-related for Trent before my sister-in-law picks me up ~6 for a girls' night out. We've agreed that once we've gotten away cleanly, we may never come back.

So... this post will be shorter than I orginally hoped (curse those internet blogs and the time sucked up by reading them).

Sunday my mom and I drove east to walk through an open house by the most amazing stained glass studio I've ever seen. They simply blow right past Tiffany lamps - even art glass auction houses classify their work as Tiffany-grade.

Bogenrief's Studio started in 1978 by a couple who worked at a meat-packing plant. During a labor strike, they decided to make a stained glass window for their Victorian house. They never got the window made, and they've never looked back. They're currently in an old high school building with different stages of the process set up in various former classrooms.

The window off to the right (known as the Jungle Window) is an example of their work. This piece is 9 1/2 feet wide by 11 feet tall. Yes, you read the dimensions right. Over 20,000 pieces of glass and 400+ shades of green, if I remember correctly. It hasn't been sold yet, but the price tag will be somewhere between a quarter and half a million dollars.

It's seeing art like this that just leave me speechless. I look and just want to halt my thoughts and actions... I just want to absorb.

Maybe someday we could save enough money to purchase one of their smaller blown glass art objects. I like the idea of the art in our home being by local artists or artists we know personally.

What I wouldn't give for our friend Matt McNary's MAP picture... (Never mind that it sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $500) [sigh]