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-I don't know if a million people
go out to the end of Concourse A,
but it's probably hundreds of thousands of people every year.
The piece at the airport was really important in my career
because so many people go to the airport.
That was when I started to see that people, they would go,
"Oh. You did that thing at the airport."
That was probably the biggest thing I have ever done
or ever will do.
♪♪
I got started as an artist because my mom was a painter,
and she didn't have the opportunity
to be a professional artist, but she valued it.
So I grew up around it.
I really always liked drawing and painting and clay
and whatever was around, I did it.
♪♪
I got a B.A. degree at Evergreen,
and I had a summer job in a stained-glass studio,
and they suggested that I research glass painting.
I thought that sounded fun, and I did,
and that changed my life.
♪♪
I found it to be an incredibly wonderful material,
and a lot of it was happening in the northwest,
so it kind of gave me an entrance
into a very supportive community
of people working with glass.
Gave me the opportunity to innovate in it,
because I-I-I taught myself.
Grisaille is a black drawing on colored glass.
"Grisaille" -- it's a French word,
and it means "gray tonal painting".
♪♪
The first layer is linework,
and it gets painted on with a tracing brush.
It has a particular character of line,
and you'll see it in medieval stained glass.
The enamels are glass powder with metal oxides.
Mix it into a paint, paint the lines,
and then it's fired in a kiln so that that enamel melts.
A wash of black is applied
and then that's worked subtractively with dry brushes.
It pokes holes in the -- in the paint
and light comes through,
establishing tonality and pattern.
♪♪
I've been painting on glass for not quite 50 years.
I did stained glass for the first 10 or 12 years.
That is one of my early pieces,
and it is called "Baram Gur Kills a Dragon".
That's really how I taught myself to work with glass paint.
I had a visit one day from a couple of artists,
and shortly after that, Dale Chihuly visited my studio.
And because I was working with enamels,
which was unusual with glass, I kind of got welcomed in.
I started working on vessel forms,
so that I bumped into the glassblowers at Pilchuck.
So there have been this kind of 10-year periods
where a shift occurs and there's a little wind in your sails
'cause you're -- you're exploring something new.
And after about 10 years of working with vessels,
I had an opportunity to do a big commission at Sea-Tac.
This was kind of a period when I was doing public art.
Glass is a good material for working in public art.
It doesn't take up a lot of space.
You have to have it anyway,
and it has a big impact because it's light-bearing.
♪♪
There's a-a big window at The Evergreen State College,
and that one's titled "I Imagine Us as a Holy Family
Engaging in the Great Work of Increasing the Light."
World cultures and religions in the image.
And it's a garden.
I want to pull people in with these ideas.
I've always been drawn to early work from many cultures --
Medieval painting or Mexican folk art
or a Persian miniature or a Russian folk print.
And I feel incredibly lucky to be here,
because glass also ended up
being an incredibly, you know, rich vein
here in the Seattle area.
And so I kind of lucked out. [ Chuckles ]
One of my favorite pieces, actually, turns out,
is the -- the big window at the airport.
It's called "I Was Dreaming of Spirit Animals".
The scale of it is monumental and, actually, to have had
the opportunity to work at that scale was so exciting.
There wasn't a lot of glass being done architecturally
in public art in -- in this area.
So I kind of was one of the early ones.
And I went to Germany and I fabricated.
Wilhelm Derix, whose company it was,
I was asking him how we were gonna do it.
He said, "Three painters, three months,"
something like that.
We made it and it was so much fun.
♪♪
Thematically, it's the northern constellations,
the animals of the northern constellations.
And then there's a tower house where there's a couple dreaming,
and it's me and my husband, Charlie.
It's based on some dreams that I'd had
when I had my first studio, about animals at that time.
The Pisces constellation is a pair of dolphins,
which I dreamt of.
It makes me feel good when I see it
and I see people enjoying it.
-As a maker, I'm impressed by it.
As a curator, I'm impressed by it.
And I'm sure, like, if I had none of those skills,
as just somebody who's interested
in the storytelling ability that she kind of has with this
and the whimsical nature of the work,
it's just hard not to be pulled into it.
-There was a little girl there.
So there's a tower house with a red door and -- and stairs.
And I saw her go up to it and try to step into the house.
So it was like, "Oh, my God."
It was like, "Yes," because that's really what I wanted.
It was a big enough scale
that you could actually be inside the picture.
It worked for her. [ Chuckles ]
I think art is something that can actually make a difference.
I want to make a difference in how people feel.
-See more of Cappy's work on her website
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Catch Art Zone Friday nights at eight and anytime online at seattlechannel.org/artzone