About the Artist:

Kristin, creator and owner behind Four Winds Handmade, is based in Lexington, KY. Trained as both a Horticultural Therapist at the New York Botanical Garden and Art Teacher at Villanova University and Rosemont College, Kristin is a self-taught glass mosaic artist.

Inspired by her love of the outdoors and gardening, she crafts decorative and functional glass art that brings color and light to both indoor and outdoor spaces.

Kristin enjoys capturing these natural scenes and subjects both in focused realism and in soft impressionistic detail, all while being mindful of the color, form, texture, and play of light that this medium lends itself to.

Technique:

Kristin draws inspiration from nature in her own back yard gardens, and from the surrounding woodlands and open fields here in central Kentucky.  She photographs flowers and animals and translate these photos by hand on to a background which will then be the base on which the glass mosaics are created.

These original mosaic designs are created using hand cut pieces of stained glass.  Much of the glass used is scrap collected from fellow stained glass artists that would otherwise be thrown away.

She shapes the glass tesserae using mosaic nippers, a wheeled glass cutter, and Running and Grozing pliers.  The glass pieces are then affixed to the mosaic base with a clear, waterproof, permanent, weatherproof silicone adhesive.  When all the tesserae are set and adhesive cured, Kristin grinds the outer edges of the entire piece with a glass grinder to smooth and refine the finished shape.  Then the entire piece is grouted with a weatherproof sanded grout, cleaned, and hand polished to shine.  It’s a fun process that feels like coloring in the picture first, then adding all the outlines at the end.