female announcer: On "Studio Space," Kati Texas visits with Bernadette Vielbig to explore the world of sculpture and installation art.

See what's inside her suitcase of wonders.

Then visit the studio of Artemio Jimenez and see the work and dedication it takes to make pieces of stained glass into beautiful windows.

"Studio Space" explores the thriving art colony of Northern California.

♪♪♪ announcer: This activity is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a stage agency, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

David Ferney: Welcome to "Studio Space."

I'm David Ferney.

Kati Texas: And I'm Kati Texas.

Today's show promises to be full of contrasts.

David: We will meet stained glass artist Artemio Jimenez.

Whether restoring old artwork or creating something new, the serene artistry of his creations shines through.

But first, Kati survives the apocalypse with sculptor Bernadette Vielbig.

Kati: Well, Bernadette, here we are in your lovely garden in your backyard.

It is noon, but it is very dark because of the wildfires.

We'll just keep making art during the apocalypse.

Bernadette Vielbig: Exactly.

And I compose.

You know, I might spend some time laying things out and looking design-wise.

What are they gonna do?

♪♪♪ Kati: Hi, I'm Kati Texas.

We're here with Bernadette Vielbig.

Welcome to "Studio Space."

Bernadette, thanks so much for having us.

Bernadette: Hi, thanks for inviting me.

Kati: So, let's jump right in.

Can you tell me about your art?

What is it that you do?

Bernadette: That's such a big question.

I do all of it, almost.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Bernadette: I have defined myself as a sculptor for the purpose of being more all inclusive, but I usually just use the term "artist."

However, as you may or may not know, when you tell someone you're an artist, and you are a female of a certain age, they automatically assume you paint people and horses.

And that's not what I do.

So, I usually use the term sculptor when that qualifier needs to be given.

But what do I do?

I do, I do many things.

I work with a lot of materials.

I am formally trained in metals.

I have a background in building and restoring and teaching in bronze foundries, welding, studios, wood shop, plaster, I'm a master mold maker.

I am self-taught.

I draw.

I do print making.

I sow.

I do performance art that's terrible and intellectual all at the same time.

I don't like to limit myself to a medium.

I use whatever is necessary for whatever it is, the story or the content that I'm trying to tell.

Kati: So, what kind of content?

What inspires you to create?

Bernadette: There's a couple of common themes that in 35 years or more have been a constant.

Whether they're overt and obvious or sort of underlying, there's always a little bit of give there.

But the idea of convenience as necessity is something that I have always tried to convey that convenience is not necessity.

We don't need more and more disposable things to make our life easier.

We don't need more and more things that take away the hard work of just living, feeding ourselves, et cetera, et cetera.

We need to maybe step back a little bit from the disposable society of what convenience is.

How are you self-sufficient?

How are you able to sustain your life without everything needing to be convenient packaged?

Et cetera, et cetera.

Kati: Did your family encourage you to pursue the arts?

Bernadette: Ah, that's a tough one, too.

I would say no, but sometimes.

I had a great aunt who was a professional artist in Canada, who met me when I was probably four years old and told my mother, pointed at me and said, "That's your artist."

And Mom was like, "I don't know.

She kind of thinks, but I don't think."

And she was like, "No, don't deny it."

So, Mom did encourage it in the means of like she would spend time taking me to San Francisco, or Sacramento, or somewhere to go to museums and see contemporary work that she didn't fully understand, but she would watch my reaction and see, "Okay, this kid gets this, and I don't know why."

And so I was encouraged in that way.

Like, I was given food.

But when it came to pursuing it as a professional, I would not say the family was necessarily on board, 'cause there's that fear of, "Oh, God, we're going to have an artist who's always going to struggle," who's always gonna this, who's always gonna that.

And I think change is hard, but I think it's important, especially for the artist.

I think it's a major part of how we develop and seeing how we can challenge and find comfort when change happens.

Kati: Well, this all sounds very fascinating.

I can't wait to see how you put it together.

Can we take a look at some of your works in progress?

Bernadette: Sure, let's head over to the studio, and I'll show you how I make the magic happen.

♪♪♪ Kati: So, can you tell us what you're working on here?

Bernadette: I don't know what it is yet, but I can tell you what I'm doing to find out.

Kati: Okay.

Bernadette: So, what I have here are--I picked this up about a week ago at the salvage yard.

It's a lovely little box.

And this is the base from a deconstruction I've been working on with this old Singer sewing machine that was beyond repair.

A lot of--the pile of things, this is not from that.

This was from the scrap yard.

It may or may not make the cut.

But all of these are parts that I was attracted to while taking this apart.

I mean, look at this, this embossed.

Kati: Oh, yeah.

Bernadette: Embossed, it's like a pear.

Kati: It's like grape leaves on there.

Bernadette: Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, this came off of a sewing machine.

And so, like, I'll clean this up, see how it reads.

This is, you know, I'm known as the fabricator, but my heart is in found assemblage, and mostly that is from I just don't like waste.

And yeah, look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

And, you know, if this makes the cut into this piece, I might take some pigment or ink and do a nice wipe in and out to really make that pattern pop even more.

This I picked up on a walk.

I don't know what that's a label to, but Bovano.

Kati: Hm, so something like this that is beyond repair, but has so many beautiful pieces in and as part of it, you're gonna take those and find new life as part of another sculpture.

Bernadette: So, anything that, of these things that I have deconstructed, that I enjoy, but they haven't made the cut yet, but they have to stay in my life, in my studio, they make it to the magic trinket box.

Oop.

Which is just that, magic trinkets, actually.

I'm very fluid in how I work.

I don't have a set structure of this is the way I make.

I am constantly evolving.

I am constantly growing.

I know that my toolbox is large.

I have skills on many mediums.

But I don't need to over-plan all of my work.

Although most people who see it are like, "Wow, there's so much planning."

Well, yeah, but I'm a contradiction, and I'm okay with that.

Kati: Fortunately, you've prepared some materials.

Bernadette: I have.

Kati: And what are you gonna show us?

Bernadette: So, I'm known as a sculptor, but I do a lot of drawing, not just in sketch book and preparation, but I do a lot of drawings as final things, as drawings.

And this one is one of my more traditional ones.

This one is actually I'm working on a commission for a good friend in New Orleans right now.

And this is white paper that I have spent about three hours embedding deeply with really rich, juicy, thick charcoal, as you can see here.

I think this is the Richland, Jack Richland, which is a fabulous dark pigment.

And in this particular process, you get dirty.

I haven't even started yet, and I'm already dirty.

But my goal is to remove, remove the charcoal to let the drawing emerge.

It's called a negative space drawing or a reductive drawing.

I know I'm gonna have some things here.

And I'm also, there's gonna need to be some tree action in here, so I want to leave some of that.

Kati: Do you have a subject matter?

Is it abstract.

Do you have something in your head?

Bernadette: No, this one actually has a subject.

This one is a--it was a request from a dear old friend.

She saw an image that I had done and wanted a variation of it.

I'm gonna do this while we talk.

Kati: No, yeah, go, go.

Bernadette: Wanted a variation of it for her and her daughter, and it will be little birds on a wire kind of a thing.

Kati: Oh.

Bernadette: But in this particular technique, you get this really intense image.

There's control in this, in that you need to understand the areas that you don't want to completely void out, but there's not control because you have to let the medium let you know what it will and will not do for you, if that makes any sense.

And this is, this is interesting.

There's a texture underneath there.

That sometimes happens--probably from whatever sub-strait was underneath whenever I added the charcoals.

So, the space in between those lines will stay black.

And this is sky space where the white is coming out.

You know, it's funny.

I've taught all over the country, and I would always come back here on vacations, and it was a tax write-off because I would do these photographs in the redwood forest that I would use and give my students these photographs that were cropped into an abstraction of sky space with trees, usually along with the redwoods, also in their neighborhoods, wherever I lived.

And they were all inspired by these images and had never seen trees like this in all these other places I had lived.

And they were like, "This isn't real.

This is imaginary."

I'm like, "No, this is, this is home."

[laughing] Kati: Yeah, yeah, we live on Endor.

Bernadette: Something like that.

Kati: Yeah, we live in a magical fairyland.

Bernadette: Yes, we do.

Yes, we do.

I'm just trying to see what's going on here.

Yeah, and that's sometimes what happens in these white spaces, and that's the exciting part of these types of drawings is you don't know what's gonna--it's very hard to control what's gonna happen in this tape that is now covered in charcoal on the outside.

When I'm done, we'll create a beautiful white border for framing.

Kati: That's such like pro artist magic right there.

Bernadette: It is totally.

Kati: How do you get those lines?

Bernadette: It's just tape.

♪♪♪ Kati: When you're creating an assemblage or a sculpture, how do you know when it's done?

Bernadette: Ah, that's a very good question.

Sometimes you don't.

If I'm designing for an exhibition, whether it's solo or a group.

I like to know the venue, the space, because I design for the--even whether it's a wall piece or something that you have to physically manipulate yourself around in the space to experience.

I know it's done when it manages to do that in that space.

I have been told by gallerists in every place I've lived, that represented me, that my shows were the most attended by homeless and street people, who would never dare open the door.

And I take that as a compliment when I've heard that.

Like, you know, this is a door that they're terrified of they would never come in, but I made someone comfortable enough to come into what is usually considered an elitist venue.

I'm pretty damn proud of that.

Kati: Well, Bernadette, it's been a weird day.

Thank you so much for having us.

Bernadette: Thank you, Kati.

Kati: And thank you for joining us on "Studio Space."

♪♪♪ Artemio Jimenez: Everything from the glass cutting is still all done by hand.

Whether it's a foil technique or a lead technique, all of that's still done by hand.

So, all of it's still very, you know, it's to myself and even people that have worked with me, you know, it becomes very personal, because you're seeing something from a design.

And then once you have every single aspect, you know, hands-on, and all the way into installing that project.

And so when people see that, you know, for myself, I like that part because, you know, I know that we started from something, from an idea, and then we came up with a stained glass window.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: Tell us about how you got started doing stained glass.

Artemio: Well, a friend of mine introduced me into stained glass.

He and I worked at the same job in high school.

And after high school, he had asked me--you know, we were both kind of tired of our current jobs.

And he asked me if I would like to go work for his dad.

And his dad owned a local stained glass business.

And so it was something new to me.

I said yeah.

Why not?

Let me try it out.

Ever since then, it's kind of been a passion of mine.

David: One of the most impressive pieces of work that I have seen that you did was the incredible restoration of The Old Steeple windows out in Ferndale.

That just seems like a real massive project and really beautiful.

Can you tell us a little bit about that project?

Artemio: When I was contacted by the owner, Paul, I had a couple of opportunities to go down there and take a look at them.

The windows, you know, they were 116 years old.

So, it was a very interesting project because, you know, they're historical windows.

And one of the processes that we had to take a look at first was what needed to be done.

And over the years, there was quite a bit of damage done to the windows, bullet holes through there.

So, once we assessed the windows we just had to, we set up a timeline with Paul to remove them and to restore them.

We had to match all the glass as close as we could to it.

Some of that glass, you know, was made, you know, 116 years ago, and so, you know, it was pretty hard to, you know, it was challenging to match those.

But once we were able to, you know, we were able to start removing the windows, start to deconstruct them and repaint pieces that needed to be repainted and reassembled, manufacture them in our studio and then reinstall them.

But that was a very interesting and personally one of my favorite projects so far and it was just the whole restoration process of it.

David: Tell us a little bit about your own creative process.

Artemio: When a client comes to us and they're looking for a custom project, a lot of times they'll come with an idea.

What I'm doing with these lamps right here is I'm replacing this old clear glass, it's a satin glass, I'm replacing that with this iridized glass right here.

And so each one of these pieces right here are going to slide up in the lamps.

They'll all fit like this, replacing each one of these pieces right now.

And so I'm going to cut a couple of the pieces so that we can fit them up into the lamp.

And once I'm done cutting and putting them into the lamp, they should look completed like this one right here that has all these pieces in it.

And so there I just placed this so that it's all in the right direction, set up in the right direction.

Then all I have to do is come in and trace it.

And then we can put the next one to it, as well.

So, that way we keep everything, everything the same shape, the same size.

So, once we have the pieces cut out or marked, we can take this over here.

We can take a cutter, take that cutter and go right on the inside line of that.

Artemio: Set that piece aside.

And you want to try to stay as straight as you can, of course.

Artemio: Now we can get our running plier here, and it should just snap off.

So, when glass cut--breaks like that, we can take our grouser, and we can take that, and we can break that apart.

And so once the pieces are cut like this, and they're matched up, and make sure that they're the same size.

Then we can set them into our little lamp here.

Be careful with this.

So, then we set it up in here, slide it in.

Make sure that this goes inside.

Artemio: Oops.

Artemio: And so then we replace those and that is what they'll look like right here, and it'll look this little lamp right here, as well.

So that's how the glass is cut, and then we fit it into its right position for this particular little project, these lamps.

So we cut each piece of glass to the exact size as what was in here, and then we slid them in.

And so that is what they look like, and then the finished product, once it's all finished, it'll have everything inside of it like that.

♪♪♪ David: You know, it's interesting to see your studio because there's so much different glass product and different, you know, different textures and things that you can work with.

Artemio: There are.

There are different manufacturers in stained glass.

There's what we call hand rolled antique, and some of that stuff comes from--we use glass from Germany, from France, from over there in Europe.

And so we get that glass.

A lot of that glass is mouth blown and hand rolled glass.

But some of the newer glass manufacturers here in the United States, for example Bullseye or Kokomo.

They'll do machine-rolled, and so there is a little bit of difference in texture-wise, thickness-wise.

So, antique glass has a nice antique because it's all mouth blown, all hand rolled.

It has an unevenness to it that gives it a different kind of illumination, and when light goes through it, whereas something that's machine rolled, all still very beautiful glass.

I mean, every single manufacturer has kind of their own technique and their own colors and styles, but you can see the difference between an antique and let's say a new world stained glass.

Most of the machine rolled are gonna be the same thickness, about an eighth inch thick, whereas an antique glass can go from an eighth inch thick or a sixteenth inch thick and go up to a quarter inch thick, all in one sheet.

It gives it all different depths, color in that glass.

David: Interesting, yeah.

Artemio: Glass is so, you know, it's so unique.

It's so captivating.

Some pieces that you can look at, and you can look at it when it's dark, or you can look at it when there's no light in the back, and it's beautiful.

But once you hold it up to the light and once light transcends through there, it's, you know, it's a whole 'nother, it's a whole 'nother visual aspect of it.

And I've always, I've always had, you know, even as a child, I've always been kind of artistic.

You know, I'd doodle, and draw, and stuff, and I was always interested in color.

When I was introduced to the medium of stained glass, you know, I started to work with the glass itself and the way that the colors changed, and the way that the light works with glass.

That's really what drew me to it.

It was just, over time it just became a passion of mine to kind of see what we can make out of one sheet of glass.

And one sheet of glass, once you mix that with a whole 'nother palate of different colors could really highlight one piece, and it's really a lot of stained glass is balancing out colors, so that not one is too dominant over the other.

Everything has to be cohesive, and everything has to work together, and it tells a story.

Stained glass and glass tells a story.

Whether it's in a small commissioned piece or a church window, that's--those are some of the aspects of why glass is so interesting to me, yeah.

We create stained glass using just natural light, putting them in windows, or we create stained glass that you can use artificial lighting in.

And so those, again, both equally as beautiful, but in their own right.

So, it just depends on how lighting is used with the types of glass that we use, as well.

Glass is very interesting.

I mean, there's literally thousands of colors of glass, and so I have, you know, quite a bit in my studio, but it doesn't compare to the entirety of palate of all the stained glass colors that are out there.

Most people associate stained glass with churches or, you know, as in a window, but stained glass can be applied to several different mediums, you know.

Wood, a wood sculpture, or a metal sculpture, concrete sculptures.

Those are something that I think that's something I would like to do, not just, you know, a small sculpture, but, you know, something that's 15, 20 feet high, you know, that has, that incorporates lighting and stained glass, whether it's wood, or metal, something like that.

I think that would be, you know, probably in the future sometime where I have the time to just do that.

And, you know, I think that would be something that I would enjoy doing.

David: Thanks so much for joining us, Art.

This has been really fascinating.

Artemio: Well, thank you for having me.

It's been my pleasure.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Kati: To visit with other Humboldt County artists or to watch other great shows about local issues, go to keet.org.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: This activity is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a stage agency, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ...