When Seattle-based software engineer and Transformers fan Craig Kovatch saw a print called Optimus Prime Noveau, he was struck with divine, or at least DIY, inspiration. Kovatch felt that the image, which combines a giant robot subject with Alphonse Mucha styling, could work perfectly in stained glass.
The only problem: He had never made stained glass before.
Deciding that "fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing," he signed up for a class to learn how he could apply a thousand-year-old craft to a futuristic subject and spent close to 70 hours perfecting his rendition of the pop culture icon.
Kovatch spent weeks tweaking the colors of glass before soldering each piece together, and had to get creative about sourcing his materials. "All of the glass in this piece was cut from whatever I could find for sale in the glass studio on the day that I got to building a particular section," he says. "The eyes were cut from a very small piece of scrap glass I found in a bin, and the green iridized Matrix of Leadership glass came from a panel that had exactly enough area to build those four pieces. Any mistakes in cutting I just had to accept and work with. That's a very different mode of creativity than the iterative, perfectionist refinement that is involved in engineering, and that was quite a refreshing and growing experience for me."
Considering the amount of glass and hot metal flying around a stained-glass workshop, Kovatch got off lucky, earning just a few blisters and cuts. "I now have exactly zero fear of broken glass," he says. "You get used to getting home and just finding your hands bleeding from six different places; like 'meh, no biggie.' One of my friends suggested the DNA those cuts leave behind on the glass can serve as an indisputable certificate of authenticity."
(Of course, any aspiring glass artists should remember to heed Optimus' famous warning, "There’s a thin line between being a hero and being a memory," and take safety precautions around sharp glass.)
The finished piece, called St. Optimus of Prime, shows Kovatch's latent talent for glasswork; however, he has no plans to create unnecessary sequels. "I think Megatron's mullet-helmet is sort of lame in this generation of Transformers, and he's pretty monochromatic, so I'm not sure he'd look great as a window," he says. "I'd probably go with Starscream for the contrast in lines — he's got a lot more curves than Optimus — or Soundwave for the contrast in colors, since St. Optimus is a pretty brightly colored piece."
All photos by Craig Kovatch except where noted.
