Carla McFarland

by Mark Stanley

Carla McFarland's home is filled with a peaceful energy, which flows through the rooms like an invisible current. Her stained glass creations hang in the windows, showering the rooms with a myriad of prisms. It's a home which the McFarland's have lived in for almost 35 years, since pouring their 'blood, sweat and tears' into its conversion from a duplex to a house.

Their home doubles as a studio for Carla, whose home and artwork have much in common: the serenity that each invoke and the amount of effort invested.

Viewing the dancing prisms thrown by her stained glass, it is difficult to distinguish where Carla's home ends and her art begins; whether her house is so tranquil because of the stained glass hanging in it, or if the stained glass creates a feeling of peace because it was made in such a serene environment.

Either way, the house is an ideal setting for an artist.

In an enclosed deck located in the back of the house, three stained glass windows depicting a running creek, a purple flower, and a mesmerizing pattern, hang in a window overlooking Carla's quaint and well-tended garden. These pieces, different in size and style and made at various times throughout the years represent Carla's explorations in the world of stained glass.

Carla retired from her job as a junior high special education teacher a little over five years ago. Never one to sit idly by, Carla began searching for a way to satisfy her creative energy. At the time, she was weaving baskets, a hobby she'd been doing for nearly 25 years, but she felt it was time for a greater challenge.

She recalls seeing the stained glass artwork of her friend Kathy Hauser, and thinking to herself, "If I could do something like that, it would be a real accomplishment."

So Carla, like any up-and-coming artist trying to learn the tricks of the trade, began immersing herself in the realm of stained glass. At the behest of her husband Jack, an English professor at Columbia College, Carla enrolled in a class.

She recounts that learning how to create stained glass was an arduous task, but that the patience she had learned from years working in special education paid off tremendously during the process.

In just five years, Carla's determination has helped her make great strides in her art, enabling her to create ever more elaborate pieces. However, she doesn't see herself as an artist in a certain sense of the word.

"An artist is somebody who has a vision," says Carla. "They have a way of looking at something and interpreting it. I am just working with shapes and colors. Creating stained glass is more mechanical."

Carla references local painter David Spear as an example of such an artist. Three of Spear's works hang in Carla's living room, including an original portrait of her husband Jack, and she speaks admiringly of the artist.

Despite Carla's modesty, as well as her preference for the aesthetically pleasing over the esoteric, it is impossible not to view the beautiful stained glass pieces she creates as art, especially when considering the effort and time that go into them. The intricate stained glass scene of the creek in Carla's enclosed deck is made of 400 minute pieces and took over three weeks to create.

No matter the extent to which Carla considers herself to be an artist, one thing is certain: that each time she sells one of her glass artworks, a little piece of her serenity is packaged up with her art and shared with another home.

Carla McFarland | CAL Online Artist Village | Columbia Art League
copyright © Carla McFarland + CAL