Exhibits, Shows & Press
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The New Hope Artist Series is pleased to announce...
Resident Artist: Billy Geller River House at Odette's New Hope, PA June 21st - 6pm-8pm More details coming soon.... |
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Geller Glass in the News
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The Glass MenagerieLeslie Garisto Pfaff Reprinted from Rutgers Magazine From his home in North Brunswick, New Jersey—more precisely, the basement—Bill Geller, who is winding down a 50-year career as an attorney, manipulates glass into many forms, from traditional Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps to glass plates splashed with colorful flowers that evoke the playfulness of a Chagall painting.
Photography by Nick Romanenko |
For 30 years, alumnus Bill Geller has worked with glass in untold, imaginative ways to create breathtaking works of art.
Bill Geller is besotted with glass. He defends it against other artistic media with the fervor of a man upholding the reputation of his inamorata. “With painting, your materials are the canvas and the paint,” says Geller NCAS’62. “With glass, you can paint on glass, you can melt it, you can manipulate it, and the only limitations are your ability with your hands and this thing called creativity.” He adds a “how do I love thee” list of its virtues: “You have a solid object that you can see through. Its colors change with the weather and the time of day. It can be sandblasted; it can be carved; it can be etched with acid; it can be painted.”
Geller’s love affair with the medium has lasted three decades, but his loyalties have always been divided. First, there’s his nearly 50-year career as a successful attorney. And then there’s his wife, Elinor. She’s mostly gotten used to the long hours he puts in at his basement worktable, having taken to calling him “the troll.”
When you see what Geller has learned to do with glass, you can understand the attraction. It’s everywhere in the expansive lakeside house he and his wife share in North Brunswick, New Jersey, and what’s most stunning is the variety of forms he’s allowed it to take. There are traditional Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps, a square contemporary-style bowl crafted from a row of slender multicolored glass rods, glass plates splashed with wildly colorful flowers that bring to mind the playfulness of a Chagall painting, and etched vases that have the organic look of large, recurved flower petals. It’s hard to imagine that all of this started nearly 30 years ago with a broken stained-glass window.
He and his wife had picked the window up at an antiques shop. It was still lodged in the original window sash, and Geller thought it would look better in a picture frame, so he took it down to the basement and tried to remove it from the sash using, among other things, a blowtorch. It turned out to be his first lesson in glasswork: “Glass,” he says with a laugh, “doesn’t like heat.” He next heard about a class in stained glassmaking and decided to take it, figuring the instructor might offer him some advice on fixing the window. Alas, the advice wasn’t what Geller was hoping for. “The teacher said to me, ‘You can’t fix that; it’s broken glass.’” But now that he’d mastered the basics, he was moved to visit a local stained-glass shop and was inspired by what he saw. “And I just started doing stuff.”
What’s kept him at it is, in part, the counterpoint glasswork presents to his legal career, from which he expects to retire this year. As a lawyer, he says, he creates legal papers, “and at the end of the week, you turn the white paper into green paper, but there’s nothing there.” What he loves about working with glass is its physicality. “You take these disparate elements and put them into harmony,” he notes, “and sometimes you create music.” Geller attributes his love of glasswork to a fascination with art that began in childhood. He might have pursued a more creative career, but “my mother said, ‘You have to get an education and work hard and be a professional.’” His father had a different take: “Don’t listen to her,” he said. “Just be lucky.”
As it happens, Geller has done both, to impressive results—with the help of a broken window. •
— Leslie Garisto Pfaff
Bill Geller is besotted with glass. He defends it against other artistic media with the fervor of a man upholding the reputation of his inamorata. “With painting, your materials are the canvas and the paint,” says Geller NCAS’62. “With glass, you can paint on glass, you can melt it, you can manipulate it, and the only limitations are your ability with your hands and this thing called creativity.” He adds a “how do I love thee” list of its virtues: “You have a solid object that you can see through. Its colors change with the weather and the time of day. It can be sandblasted; it can be carved; it can be etched with acid; it can be painted.”
Geller’s love affair with the medium has lasted three decades, but his loyalties have always been divided. First, there’s his nearly 50-year career as a successful attorney. And then there’s his wife, Elinor. She’s mostly gotten used to the long hours he puts in at his basement worktable, having taken to calling him “the troll.”
When you see what Geller has learned to do with glass, you can understand the attraction. It’s everywhere in the expansive lakeside house he and his wife share in North Brunswick, New Jersey, and what’s most stunning is the variety of forms he’s allowed it to take. There are traditional Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps, a square contemporary-style bowl crafted from a row of slender multicolored glass rods, glass plates splashed with wildly colorful flowers that bring to mind the playfulness of a Chagall painting, and etched vases that have the organic look of large, recurved flower petals. It’s hard to imagine that all of this started nearly 30 years ago with a broken stained-glass window.
He and his wife had picked the window up at an antiques shop. It was still lodged in the original window sash, and Geller thought it would look better in a picture frame, so he took it down to the basement and tried to remove it from the sash using, among other things, a blowtorch. It turned out to be his first lesson in glasswork: “Glass,” he says with a laugh, “doesn’t like heat.” He next heard about a class in stained glassmaking and decided to take it, figuring the instructor might offer him some advice on fixing the window. Alas, the advice wasn’t what Geller was hoping for. “The teacher said to me, ‘You can’t fix that; it’s broken glass.’” But now that he’d mastered the basics, he was moved to visit a local stained-glass shop and was inspired by what he saw. “And I just started doing stuff.”
What’s kept him at it is, in part, the counterpoint glasswork presents to his legal career, from which he expects to retire this year. As a lawyer, he says, he creates legal papers, “and at the end of the week, you turn the white paper into green paper, but there’s nothing there.” What he loves about working with glass is its physicality. “You take these disparate elements and put them into harmony,” he notes, “and sometimes you create music.” Geller attributes his love of glasswork to a fascination with art that began in childhood. He might have pursued a more creative career, but “my mother said, ‘You have to get an education and work hard and be a professional.’” His father had a different take: “Don’t listen to her,” he said. “Just be lucky.”
As it happens, Geller has done both, to impressive results—with the help of a broken window. •
— Leslie Garisto Pfaff