Find your
place in
the glass.

I'm Vanessa Watkins, a stained glass artist, educator, and occasional enthusiast of questionable creative decisions.

My relationship with glass has taken me from Vetrate Artistiche Toscane in Siena, Italy, to Willet Hauser in Minnesota, with chapters at Atlantis Art Glass, Arribas Brothers at Disney, and Florida Glass House along the way. I've spent years creating original artwork, restoring historic windows, repairing beloved pieces, and developing a healthy respect for a material that's as unforgiving as it is beautiful. It's a craft that demands precision, patience, and a certain willingness to accept that even your best-laid plans may end in a pile of expensive little shards.

Before making art became the center of my professional life, I worked in corporate training, which turns out to have been surprisingly good preparation for a life spent teaching. In addition to teaching stained glass workshops, I'm a middle school art teacher, where I get to introduce young artists to new materials, encourage creative risks, and witness the wonderfully unpredictable ways their imaginations work. Whether I'm working with twelve-year-olds or adults picking up a glass cutter for the first time, I love helping people discover what they're capable of making. These days, the tools are sharper, the colors are better, and the classroom conversations are considerably more entertaining than anything I encountered in a corporate conference room.

I have enormous respect for the traditions of stained glass, from the centuries-old techniques to the extraordinary craftsmanship that has kept them alive. What interests me most, though, is what happens when those traditions meet contemporary ideas, unconventional subjects, and a willingness to make something unexpected. A beautiful window doesn't have to be solemn, and a serious commitment to craftsmanship doesn't require taking yourself quite so seriously.

Bad Apple grew out of that philosophy. It's a home for traditional techniques, unconventional artwork, rich color, a little dark humor, and whatever other creative curiosities find their way onto my workbench. I believe good art should have personality, that learning should be as enjoyable as it is challenging, and that sometimes the most interesting ideas are the ones that initially seem a little questionable.

Whether I'm teaching someone to cut their first piece of glass, designing a custom window, or bringing a damaged heirloom back to life, what matters to me is the connection between the work and the person it ultimately belongs to. There's something deeply satisfying about creating an object that someone will live with, look at, and perhaps pass along someday.

And if it happens to have a little attitude, all the better.