MISSOULA - Starting a business takes a lot of confidence and usually a huge leap of faith, but seeing Montanans who have found success with their own small businesses can be a great inspiration.
Dani Bauer started working with stained glass mid-pandemic in 2020 and now, she does it full-time for her business, Glassy Leaf Studio.
Stained glass is a tough art form to get into, with a need for several expensive tools and materials and lots of patience. But for Bauer, she knew she would fall in love as soon as she found stained glass online.
“I never found an art form that...I really connected with, and I kept like trying all sorts of different stuff like watercolors and making soap,” she says. “And so, when I saw a picture of stained glass on Instagram, I just instantly connected. Like ‘oh my gosh!’ I became obsessed.”
Bauer grew up in Colorado and was homeschooled by two artistic parents. She often spent time being creative.
“[Art] was pretty much how I passed the time. I was homeschooled, and so I spent a lot of my time — my free time — building things. I'd make entire dollhouses out of cardboard with the furniture and the people and use my beanie baby– I'd make it for my beanie babies,” she said.
Her father was an engineer and passed a lot of his logical mindset onto Bauer. This came in handy when starting stained glass, as it is a structural art form.
“It’s engineering — I can do shapes and puzzles and make sure the structure is okay and perfect,” Bauer says. “And then also I have the aspect of the colors and the textures and the artsy part of it. So, for me, it's just kind of like the best of both worlds.”
Stained glass requires a lot of tedious steps, starting with designing, then carefully cutting the glass, bordering each piece with colored tape, and then connecting the pieces together by burning metal — a process called soldering.
Bauer learned each of these steps by watching YouTube videos. She says it was difficult to learn because every stained glass artist has a different process for making a piece.
“Everyone does it differently; there's a lot of different techniques,” she Bauer said. “Every artist is kind of unique in how they do it, and so I had to watch like every YouTube video I could find, because everyone did it slightly [differently], and so I got confused.”
Bauer says she has had to perfect every step because if she can’t do one of the processes, she won’t be able to do the next. For example, if she isn’t great at cutting the glass, then putting the pieces together won’t be easy.
“Stain glass isn't just like — you don't just learn one thing,” Bauer says. “There's so many different aspects you have to perfect because they build on themselves.”
Even through the difficulties, Bauer says she is very happy she found stained glass because of how beautiful it is.
“When the light shines through stained glass it's so vibrant,” And it sort of almost...shocks your brain for a minute. You're like, ‘oh wow, that's really bright and pretty’ and it sort of brings you out of your head and into the present moment.”
Prior to stained glass, Bauer owned a business arts magazine, which featured stories from artists who turned their art into successful businesses. She sold the magazine last fall to work full-time for her own company.
“I stopped teaching it and started doing it,” she said.
For Bauer, living in Montana means she has a consistent source of inspiration. She takes a lot from nature and spends a lot of her time hiking or white water rafting.
“Well, when I first started stained glass, almost all of my inspiration was nature hence my name glassy leaf studio,” she said. “It's sort of a reconnecting with yourself. When you're outside you know, you don't have your cell phone or your laptop. It’s just being present instead of all these distractions all day long and I always come back feeling more whole.”
Taking the leap of faith for Bauer was scary, but she now has a successful stained glass business and gets to spend her time doing something she loves.
She recommends anyone who wants to create an art business, start with social media. Bauer is popular on Instagram and TikTok and uses Etsy to sell a lot of her work.
“I would say get on Instagram or TikTok and just see and get a feel for what it's like, see what they're posting about, what they're doing,” she says. “And remember, while you're doing that, that they're regular people like you, like I used to look at it and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I could never do that. They're so perfect.’ You know, that's not true. We're all human beings. And social media only shows the best of their lives. Right? You know, they have other stressors in their lives. This is totally achievable. And just taking that first step and posting yourself, that's the hardest part.”
Looking into the future, Bauer is excited to continue her work at Glassy Leaf Studios. She is starting to focus more time on creating stained glass patterns and selling them to other artists.
“I mean, the great thing about this art and really any art is you can always keep building,” she says. “I mean, like, for example, my next step is I want to start incorporating metal and into my art. I've done a little bit of it so far. And then I want to get a kiln and start melting the glass and fusing glass and there's so many different things you can do. It's, I mean, I could do this for the next 30 years and still not do everything I want to do.”
More info on Dani Bauer and her work can be found on her Instagram or her website.
