The 100 Hurdle!

Sketches for Stained Glass ceiling, Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, circa 1973

Today is a milestone...One Hundred followers! Wow. I really never expected to earn the interest of so many and I am very appreciative, believe me! I shall endeavor to keep you all from getting majorly (is that a word?) bored and find good stuff to talk about and intriguing images to post.

This is a serious motivator for me to keep a fire under myself to produce the best work I can.

Thank you everyone!

I decided to celebrate my 100th follower by showing some old sketches of mine from my Illustrator days. I had just moved back to LA in 1973 and found free lance work with a company that made stained glass windows and lamps for commercial use (restaurants, etc.). They had me design windows and lampshades for The Rusty Scupper restaurant chain first and then I was hired to design a ceiling that was to be 24ft. long for the newly built Las Vegas Hilton Hotel...one of the lobbies. It had to have an underwater mermaid theme I was told. I knew a bit about how stained glass is put together having taken a short course that same year and understood about the necessity of designing to make sure the connecting areas of glass would not cause stresses that could compromise the stability of the whole. I was enthusiastic and excited. I worked for a couple of weeks on a lot of ideas and finally came up with the one you see at the bottom. I also did a colour drawing but that has long since disappeared unfortunately. Even more unfortunate was my client's reaction. Instead of the happiness and thrill I hoped for, he was very concerned over the complexity of my vision. He also did not want to pay for the 80plus hours of work I had put into this project. He paid me about half of what I expected, took my design and had his inhouse designers rework and simplify it. The result, which I didn't see until a year or so later when my husband was passing through LasVegas and stopped to take a photo of the ceiling, was a mere token of my idea. It was cartoony and limpid and a major disappointment. All I could do was chalk it up to experience. A few short years later the hotel had a big fire and the ceiling was destroyed I am told. Karmic justice I thought secretly to myself...