Quarterly Artisan Highlight: Stained Glass Maker Poochie DeMars

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For the ending of quarter two and in preparation for the summer, I choose someone who’s work, and disposition are just as sunny and joyful as the season. Retired from pharmaceutical work, and a jack of all trades, John “Poochie” DeMars is a stained-glass maker who is thrilled to jump into any project. Residing in South Carolina, DeMars is a true people person and has the gift of bringing people together in a way very similar to his art of melding-stained glass pieces into a cohesive whole. As a family friend of many years, I was thrilled when he agreed to share his creative journey into stained glass making. DeMars is energetic, engaging, and inspiring with his responses and stories behind each stained-glass work, and I hope that this interview will encourage you to use any gifts you have to create something beautiful and serve those around you.  

Where are you from and how did you get into your niche of stained-glass work?

I am from Saint Matthews, originally, but when we left Saint George and moved back to Saint Matthews which was our home, we built a new house. In our bathroom, I had three windows over a bathtub that were probably about 20 inches by 48, maybe 60, inches and I wanted to do some stained glass there, but never had done stained glass before. Cameron is about 7 miles away from Saint Matthews, and I met the guy in Cameron who did stained glass for a living. He had a little small shop and after I got to be friends with him, he said he would teach me a little stained glass. He had two or three other people who wanted to do stained glass also, so we had a little class. All I did was learn how to cut glass, take lead, at the time, to put it together and solder it.

My cousin had sent me a picture of birds of paradise flower with this fancy background around it and I thought “man would that be pretty to make over my bathtub”. Once we created a pattern, he scaled it to fit the three windows. The guy that taught me the class said, “man that’s kinda complicated to start off doing” and I said, “oh no, nothings complicated for me”. Sure enough, I did that and when we finished it up, he wanted me to leave it in his shop to show everybody. He loved it! That was my first detailed piece I did. I was building the house in Saint Matthews, so I put it in there over the bathtub – I hated that though when we sold the house and moved. We had just built a cabin in Saint Matthews, and had I known I would sell our house just a few months earlier, I would have put some windows in the cabin and taken that stained glass out to keep my first piece. But I couldn’t do that, so I had to leave it there, although that piece was my pride and joy.

What has been your favorite piece of art that you have done?

With the bird of paradise being my first big piece, it was a favorite. Also, the piece I did for my friend, Dolly. She had a wooded lot near her house, but someone was building a house that you could see from her bathroom. No one could see in there, but she wanted some privacy, so they went off somewhere for a trip and when they came back I had it installed. This image doesn’t totally show what it looks like as stained glass is not made for sun to hit. Sun amplifies it too much. You need to have light outside, but not sun on the glass. But also, the window had these panes dividing it, so I had to draw my lines for the art so that they would split the panes with the glass instead of having the pane marks in the middle. She didn’t want many flowers, so I put a cross with a single rose in the center of the cross. I kept changing the arches of the curves throughout because they didn’t look quite right. If you look at the colors, I had red in the middle, but I wanted blue and red up top and then I wanted it to meet the red down at the bottom as well. Really, I wanted everything to blend together. I mean you can put some stuff together that’s terrible looking, but this piece and the bird of paradise are my favorite ones I ever did.

What I do now is, most times someone wants me to do stained glass, I am not going to have them pay me to do the stained glass. That is commission and I am not going to do that, because then it has to be too perfect and you have to worry if they don’t like it. I tell someone if you want me to do stained glass, you buy the glass and then I’ll do it for free. I don’t want anything because its therapy. It gives me something to do.

Where do you find inspiration?

Well, I don’t do a ton of stained glass simply because I don’t have a place to put it. Like, I love doing woodwork, but I don’t have a place to put it. In the past, the church wanted something, so I built a table. If somebody wants something, I don’t mind doing it, but the hardest thing for me with stained glass is a design. You have to come up with a design and draw it on paper. I have a bunch of books that give me ideas and as I see stained glass in other places, I will take pictures and say, “one day I might use something out of that”. I have lots of times had a hard time with originality. Now I have some cousins that, honey, they can do anything you want, like sculptures, really anything. It is so beautiful. I don’t know where he gets it from, but he can do anything. The one for Dolly that I did, I drew it for several months. I had it on a table out in my garage and I drew basically what I thought I wanted. Then every day I would walk by it and take a glimpse at it, think “well I don’t quite like that” and then erase it, and change it. I just kept looking and kept changing it. One day her mama came by, and I said, “that’s what its going to look like when I get it done if I don’t keep changing it”. Finally, I became satisfied, and I put it together. It is very pretty.

Do you have a favorite subject to incorporate?

No, that’s the fun part of stained glass, you can do anything you want to do. It doesn’t matter what it is. Like the palm trees that I showed you a while ago, I went online and finally found two pictures that were pretty. I liked the form and then I drew it and changed it a little bit. You can do any subject.

Has your style or stained-glass process evolved over time?

The one big change we made was that it used to be done with lead. All the stained glass was put together with “H” channel lead that you would slide the glass in the “H”. But then when it started coming out that the lead caused lead poisoning and all that, they did away with the lead. Most of it is copper foil now. I use copper foil tape that comes in a variety of widths. I like the wider one because it is easier to put around the glass. You have to clean the glass, then put the tape where it goes around each side of the glass so that you can solder it and it will bond it together. It might take a little longer to put the foil on, but not much. The tape sticks to the glass, so that’s the big change in doing stained glass.

Likewise, you should see all of the automated programs for stained glass. You can draw lines, circles, connected shapes; I think the program is called Dragonfly. The thing is though that I have a hard time learning new programs, but I would love to know how to do that. You can come up with all kinds of patterns and then print them out on the large printers like for architectural plans. I have to use pencil and rulers and such, but with the new programs you can scale or resize or whatever and it really helps.

What do you want people to take away from your work?

Well, you want them to like it! You want them to be satisfied. That’s why I don’t charge to do it. But really, I find out what kinds of things they want in a stained-glass piece so they will like it. Your mother, she requested red. Red is the one thing that you don’t use much in stained glass because it is too hot. If I did an entire window and added a piece of red in there, that’s the piece that is going to stand out over the whole glass. Everything else is toned down. You know how they made red stained glass? Gold dust. They take gold powdered dust and put it in the hot glass when it is melted, and it turns red. That’s why it also costs more. A piece of red stained glass used to be like $10-12 and the other colors might have been around $4-5. It is at least twice as much.

Then he said he would like to have the decal in stained glass. He came over and helped a little with it. I made it in our previous garage, but in the house that we are in now, I have a room upstairs that I added cabinets to with a rolling counter so that I can lay out all my pieces, move it and such to work on it with people. He got busy and I needed the space in my garage so, I finished the stained glass of the decal and then he gave it to his grandmother. The woodpecker has a cigar in his mouth smoking, but you can see how strong the red is in comparison to the other colors.

Do you have a dream project?

No, but this piece is over at my daughter’s house in her bedroom upstairs over the garage. With her going to Clemson, I had to add a little orange in there. But I did that in two pieces, because the biggest thing in doing stained glass it is that has to fit when you are done. So, you have to measure inside the window and then take off an 1/8 of an inch. If you don’t get it square, it will be off in one corner. But you can take a grinder and grind the metal on the outside down a little bit if you need to make it squeeze in. It would have been hard to do that in one whole piece because it would have been at least  6 feet wide. So, I did it in two sections. I took the first half to make sure it fit in the window, then I just reversed the pattern and did the other side.

Then I did one for my other daughter, which is over a bathtub. That’s a big piece also. Its around 70 inches by at least 30 inches. Its big, and heavy too. But some of the design in there, I got the ideas out those books and it took a while. You can see the mix of colors though. That’s another thing; the hardest part about doing stained glass for me is picking out colors. You want them to blend. You see you have blue and green in the center, so then I found a piece on the outside that has some blue and green, then a piece that has some darker blue and then some lighter blue, so it all blends together.

Do you have a favorite color or glass type to incorporate into your stained glass?

There are different companies that make glass. I used to like one named GNA, but then I started using waterglass. Spectrum waterglass which makes the stained glass so pretty. I got glass charts a bit ago and they help me pick out glass. They make different kinds, so once I have the charts, I can look at them right there. Before, like when I did Dolly’s piece, I had to go on the computer for the company that I bought glass from and then print on photograph paper the ones that I like. They have now whole sets of glass charts too, but then every couple of years you have to buy a new one to upgrade it and it gets kind of expensive. It is very helpful though when picking out colors. If I have an extra piece of glass, I never throw it away, but use it in another work.

I went on a mission trip to Nicaragua a number of years ago and they were building a dormitory on a pineapple farm where we were going with 5 windows. I told them to measure the windows out and I would make them some stained glass, hoping it would fit in there. But if some of them didn’t fit, there were carpenters right down the road that made the windows, so we had them chisel it out so it all would fit. I used tons of glass left over from other projects and did diamond shapes before I put a glass pineapple in the middle of it. In fact, funny thing was that to get it down there, I had to find a good way to send them. I had five of pieces so, I bought a bow and arrow case that fit them perfectly and I even had room to put a piece of foam between them. But then I was like, “you know what, someone is going to stop me if I am walking through Atlanta with a bow and arrow case getting ready to go on an airplane. That is not going to look good.” Two friends from our church were going and one is an airline flight attendant on Delta. We were flying on Delta, so instead I bought a heavy-duty cardboard box which I put the glass and foam in and then put straps around it. I bought a little cart to roll it, as it would be heavy, and I gave it to them so they could store it on the airplane and not put it in cargo area to get broken. But none of it broke and we got them installed.

What’s a fun fact about you people will be surprised by?

Hmm a fun fact…. I have to think about that one. I like doing so much stuff that’s fun. I like being around people. I am a total people person. My wife likes being around people, but not as much as me. When we go to the cabin, she is satisfied doing down there by herself or just me and her. But I have so much fun when we go down with a group of people. We used to go down the week after Christmas and we hunted all week and cooked. But I like joking and telling funny stories and being around lot of people.