I Have Been Turning Old Slides Into Stained Glass Style Windows.

Both of my parents were professors and I remember watching them spend hours pouring over slide carousels, prepping for their lectures. As any art student up through the last ten years or so will tell you, 35mm slides for their portfolios were an essential part of prepping for applications as well.

I’ve always associated these cute little mini photos with family, good memories and the anticipating of waiting to see if my work was good enough for the next step in my career.

Little by little, these square plastic bits of memory have been replaced by digital photos and powerpoint as universities and families alike tossed them into the garbage after they were digitized and left them to fade away in piles.

As the university was bringing it’s slide library into the digital age, a friend managed to squirrel away some of the slides into a pile for us to create with some day. Ten years later, I finally had a brain wave. I’ve been working in stained glass for 15 years and on a cleaning spree of my studio it struck me, what are slides if not tiny little bits of window? So an idea was born and so was my first experiment. In an effort to provide both light and privacy to my bathroom window, my first effort was reasonably large, and it was so exciting to see the mystery of each little photo light up inside my room during the day, and shine out at my neighbors at night.

Now I’m interested in creating larger, crazier shapes, and helping save the memories of parents and grandparents by making panels on commission for others. I’m taking little slides that were used to share trips, memories, and lectures, stay alive using windows as their lightboxes, and trying to keep the memorial pieces of plastic out of the landfills.

More info: tartackerart.com