Light Shines Through Her Art
Story By Barbara W. Russell
“A beautiful piece of art, well made, intelligently, and with love and care, is the purest form of human communication. That’s why good art transcends time,” says Pooler’s freelance artist, Ardra Hartz.
Her medium is glass art, and the beauty of churches’ stained glass inspires her.
“I am fascinated by the uniqueness of the medium of stained glass. It is the only art that utilizes transmitted light,” she said. “Every other art medium depends on reflected light. If you look at a statue, the light is bouncing off of it. If you look at a painting, the light is reflected from it. With stained glass, the light goes through it. That’s an entirely different matter, and I’m just drawn to the unusual, and the unique, and the different, and that’s why I picked stained glass as a medium.”
Hartz says that her art career may have been influenced by her father who was a designer of auto parts and was one of the designers of the Ford Mustang hood ornament. “He spent time teaching me things like draftsman/technical lettering, spacing, and things like that. I thought maybe there was some influence there because I really like the meticulous, fine details.”
She acknowledges that her interest in art was definitely influenced by her high school art class. “In my senior year of high school I needed an elective, and I took an art class. Things sort of clicked in my head, like ‘Oh, this is really cool,’” she said. “We had to do a sketch book and turn it in every Friday, and we did still life drawings for the first 30 minutes of every class. Some of our drawings were in pencil, some in pen and ink, and some were in watercolor wash. We painted in acrylics, we did a section on ceramics, and I made pieces of pottery that I still have. It was just a very well-rounded semester of art. I mean, he really was a man ahead of his time for a high school art teacher.”
It was while she was in college that Hartz began to pursue the possibilities of an art career. “When I went to college, I continued to take art classes and core classes, but I really didn’t know what I wanted to study,” she said. “After two years I decided to major in English and minor in Art. My college counselor said, ‘You’ll never be able to support yourself with artwork. You need to make sure you have your teaching license.’” In other words, being a teacher would pay her bills, but being an artist would only be a hobby.
She took that advice to heart and became an English teacher, but she would prove him wrong in the long run.
Hartz got married and taught high school English for 4 ½ years, and then had two children. She taught English classes at night for three years, and although she was teaching English, she incorporated art into her teaching.
“Both of my children were in elementary school before I finally made a decision to drop everything else and set up an art studio,” she said. “When my youngest was in first grade, I just totally bailed on teaching and established the studio, and I started at ground zero, in 1985, in Indiana.
“I had to decide on a direction (for her art business), and for where I lived, it seemed like the best direction was residential architectural glass art work. I took my samples, put on a blazer, and I started around town. I had made several (stained glass) kitchen cabinet door inserts, and I visited every kitchen cabinet display store in town. I asked permission to leave my cards, and a sample, or possibly do a sample in one of their doors. By the end of the day I had six who said, ‘Sure.’
“Then as people responded to the idea of putting stained glass in their kitchen cabinet doors, then I also got commissions like bathroom windows and sidelights. Then I decided, okay, this is what you need to do, you need to make contact with the builders. So I joined a home builders association, and things just kind of mushroomed from there.
“Eventually then, I was able to gravitate to some church work, and the museum called me and I repaired a piece of stained glass for them They really liked my work, and called me with other work, so it just kinda of went from there.”
Her first studio was in a building that was separate from their house on their 15 acres of land. While Hartz was working in her studio, the children would “do their homework, practice piano, and play intelligently together (she laughs). Most of the time they were real good,” she said, “and I gave each (daughter Jaime and son Jared) individual studio time. This was special time with them.”
Eventually she moved her art business into a commercial building. “I was getting bigger jobs and I outgrew the space,” she said. “I named my studio in Indiana ‘Joylight’. It comes from scripture verse, ‘The joy of the Lord is my strength,’ and Where did light come from? God created light ‘Let there be light.’”
Those special “studio times” she had with her children must have meant a lot to them, so much that her daughter also pursued an art career. Jaime moved to Savannah, attended SCAD, and majored in metalsmithing and jewelry. “She encouraged me to come down here because it’s such an artistic area,” said Hartz. “Savannah is an architectural feast for the eyes. I remember walking around town with a sketchbook just sketching all the different ironworks.”
How could any artist not fall in love with Savannah? And although her daughter has graduated from SCAD and now lives and works in St. Louis, Hartz has made this her home.
Before she moved her stained glass business to Georgia, Hartz had completed over 675 commissions in residential and other architectural work, replication and restoration work for the Evansville museum and for churches in several states, and painted ecclesiastical windows, both singular and in series. That sounds like her artwork is more than a hobby.
Her message: “Any college education can be adaptable. Your education can take you a variety of different directions – always be open to that. For example: I’ve always enjoyed teaching classes in my studio. I use my college degree in composition by writing articles for Stained Glass Magazine, and by putting together presentations for stained glass seminars.”
As a freelance artist, Hartz has continued to study the techniques of stained glass art, and she has spent a great deal of time, energy and travel getting professional training, but most of her time is spent “creating” in her studio. “I can put in an 8 or 10 hour day at other work, and come home after and work in my studio until 2:00 in the morning. I just lose track of time. It’s wonderful!” she says.
Two ‘studio cats’ also think spending time in the studio is wonderful. One is named Shania, “because she’s beautiful and she knows it,” says Hartz, and the other is Twofig. “I had a cat in Indiana named Figaro. She was the exact same color and same face, but Figaro was killed by a coyote. When I saw this little kitten, I said, ‘That is Figaro,’ but I didn’t want to repeat the name so I called her Twofig.
“My cats like to be in the studio with me, but they are only allowed to be in their little shallow boxes where they can lie there and watch what I’m doing. They’re not allowed to be on the table or on my workbench, or anywhere around my equipment, and if they get out of the box, all I have to say is: ‘In the box!’ and they go back.
“Glass workshops can be dangerous, even for cats, so rules must be adhered to. I even obey my own rules in my studio. Most of the time I wear Wolverine work boots and long sleeves, and I never wear shorts,” she said.
But accidents can still happen, to children and to adults:
“I had instilled in my children that glass can cut you,” she said. “I worked hard to train them, but one time my daughter came running into my studio, and for whatever reason she was barefoot, and she kicked a piece of glass that was propped against a wall and cut her toe.”
Hartz was also the victim of a studio accident.
“I left the studio and went back into the house to check on whatever was for dinner. I hurried back to the studio, and as I entered the studio the phone was ringing, so hurrying to the phone, as I walked past the workbench, I brushed my hand against the corner of a sheet of glass that was hanging a quarter inch off the table. My hand swiped past that piece of glass and it cut across that blood vessel, and I’ve never seen so much blood! It took 5 stitches. I must have slipped off of one of my safety rules,” she said. “It was an error of haste to answer the phone.”
Her studio is full of many finished items and many works in progress. Her stained glass projects come in all sizes and some are particularly large. One of her creations was 5’ x 5’, and one of her favorites is in 6’ tall sections. She has unique ideas and a variety of stained glass, as well as glass jewelry. She makes memoir glass, which can be made with any special photo or document, such as a birth announcement, which she mounts between two thin pieces of clear glass, and it is bordered by special memories hand painted onto the perimeter pieces. “These make treasured gifts,” she said.
Hartz’ dream is to have an artist’s co-op in Pooler- a local ‘gallery’ where different artists could show their work.
To view some of her stained glass creations, go to HYPERLINK “http://www.ardradjv.blogspot.com” www.ardradjv.blogspot.com , or visit the DJV Art Studio facebook page, and she can be reached at (912) 748-0483.
Her explanation of some of the techniques and steps in the stained glass processes are too detailed for me to write about, but I came away with an appreciation for the complexity, as well as the beauty, of her work. Some of her painted pieces have to be fired in the kiln multiple times, and one project took her 11 months to complete.
“I like the interaction of glass with the various techniques, and the artist concept of taking it to completion,” she says. “What guides me is that I can see it in my mind’s eye from the onset, but I’m open to whatever ‘happens’ during the process that engenders ongoing creativity as I work. There is no absolute doctrine of what you have to do – there are technical guidelines.
“If the maker of art is ‘inspired,’ then the work is capable of communicating to the viewer. If only one piece that I’ve ever done actually accomplished that, then all my studio time will have been well worth it!”
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