Stained-glass maker receives inspiration from Wright, nature

Beverly Schritz's Haviland china collection makes for a lovely display with the delicate apple blossoms that grace the plates and other serving pieces.

But it's the handmade stained-glass doors in front of them that steal the show.

The doors sparkle with a combination of blue and clear glass with center panels of etched glass.

Those doors were the first of a decade's worth of stained-glass projects for Schritz. Numerous other pieces, ranging from kaleidoscopes to lamps, decorate the living room of her Kila log home.

"I was hooked from the minute I started," she said.

Schritz, 57, took up the craft 10 years ago when she wanted a china cabinet for her collection. Always a do-it-yourselfer, she enrolled in a class at Flathead Valley Community College. She picked up the basics from that class and went on to teach herself, through trial and error and with the help of books, the finer points of stained-glass work.

Now her studio in the basement of her home is filled with glass of all colors and textures. Some pieces are stacked neatly in a rack on a table while scraps and smaller bits sit in boxes on the floor. At another table, Schritz heats up the soldering iron to begin working on a stained glass window she is making for a benefit for an Ohio branch of the American Cancer Society.

The window's design is one inspired by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose geometric patterns Schritz often interprets in her own work. She looks to books or even coloring books for design inspiration because, she said, "I'm not an artist. I can't even draw stick figures."

But her designs, whether they're art deco or Victorian, don't lack artistry. Schritz uses a range of colors and textures in her works that include lamps, windows and even stained-glass houses.

The houses are 3-D models that she crafts from patterns either found in a book or ones her engineer husband, Frank, draws for her. With her husband's help, Schritz has made models from photos of houses, such as the replica of the home one of her sons owns.

In making stained glass, she uses one of two methods, depending on what kind of item she's making.

For lamps, she uses a foil technique. She plans a design, then cuts the glass for it. She covers the edges with a thin layer of foil that's sticky on one side and then uses a soldering iron to join the pieces.

The foil method works well for items such as lamps because there are so many small pieces of glass and the foil is easy to apply quickly.

The alternate process uses lead rather than foil. Schritz pulls lead off a spool; its crooked appearance showing how pliable the metal is. To straighten it, she puts it in a clamp on the wall and pulls until the kinks and bends disappear.

Schritz then cuts the lead, which has a groove on either side of it so that the glass stays in place. She solders the pieces together and later adds a cement-like substance so the glass doesn't shift.

The appeal of stained glass for Schritz is the way light filters through the material. When she handles uncut pieces of glass, she quickly is able to imagine how she might use it.

"You know, it gets to the point that you look at a piece of glass and say, 'oh, poppies,'" she explained as she held a square of orange glass up to the light of a nearby window.

After a while, that kind of impromptu thinking leads to the desire to create, which is addicting.

"It's all you want to do," she said. "You don't want to eat. You don't want to cook dinner. All you want to do is cut glass."

But she isn't always able to indulge her urge for stained glass. Schritz, this year, sent her youngest child, Cindy, to an art academy in Michigan where she studies violin. Schritz has three older children as well, but she home-schooled the two youngest, so this year she is finding more time than normal to devote to her art.

Some days, though, are better than others. Schritz is a cancer survivor and has battled colon and lung cancer for the past four years. Sometimes, she is too ill to work.

When her oldest daughter, a respiratory therapist in Ohio, asked Schritz to donate a piece of art to a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society there, the artist was happy to oblige.

Schritz says that being sick has made her realize how important it is to give back to others, and her art is one way to do that. She also helps other stained-glass artists by teaching or tutoring them in the craft.

But perhaps Schritz herself is her own best pupil. She not only taught herself the majority of what she knows, but she also figured out on her own how to restore older glass.

She does restoration and repair work for customers who hear about her through word of mouth. Two such customers are the owners of the Belton Chalet, Cas Still and Andy Baxter.

Schritz did the lead glass repair on the historic chalet when Baxter and Still renovated it in the late 1990s. She fixed the more than 30 old windows, which measure 36 by 50 inches, and also suggested a solution to another window problem.

One of the basement rooms in the lodge had windows that were leaking, so Baxter and Still planned to remove them and fill in the space behind them with dirt.

But Schritz suggested that instead of replacing the windows with a wall, she could put stained glass panels in that the owners still could fill in behind without leaving a blank, boring space. The panels are lit from behind to brighten the room and show off the design.

Still said she and her husband were sticklers for keeping the renovations historically accurate, so they weren't sure what to think of Schritz's suggestion until they looked at samples of her decorative glass.

"They were so beautiful that once I saw her work," she said, "I was completely comfortable with what she was doing."

Schritz created Wright-inspired designs that incorporate colors and symbols relevant to local nature and geography. For example, one window called "The Divide," depicts the continental divide. On one side the glass is wheat-colored and on the other, blue glass symbolizes water.

Belton Chalet guests often comment on how beautiful the windows are, Still said. And as a longtime fan of Wright, the windows are a welcome addition to the room for Still.

For Schritz, the pleasure in that job came not only in creating the panels, but also from knowing that the engraved plates below the windows that bear her name are a part of a historic building.

"That is the high point of my life," she said. "It was like, 'Whoa, my name's on that.'"

Schritz enjoys history, and a perk from the Belton Chalet job was getting to keep some of the old glass pieces. She uses those leftovers now in other stained glass works.

"I like to reuse the old glass because it just kind of helps history live on and people like that," she said.

Schritz's small stained glass panels, which she calls prairie windows, are on sale in the Belton Chalet gift shop. They range from $200-350.

The artist also donated a window to the Glacier Symphony and Chorale to use as a fund-raiser. The window is a Wright design and measures 32 by 40 inches.

The symphony, for which Schritz's daughter played, will raffle off the window Dec. 9 at a luncheon. The window is on display at the Kalispell Grand Hotel. Tickets are $5. For more information, call Bev Fischer at 837-2232.

Reporter Camden Easterling can be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at ceasterling@dailyinterlake.com