Laughter, music, dancing, art - all present Saturday morning at Karyn Szaro’s stained glass studio in Chepachet, Rhode Island. “You can just feel it, that energy. I am an energy person, so I feel that energy building. The music’s on, we’re vibing and we’re jamming. I feel everyone’s positive energy. And if you didn’t feel that today you gotta be dead.”
Szaro teaches the Tiffany method of stained glass, which involves wrapping the pieces of glass in copper foil and soldering them together, instead of using lead cames. Students learn everything from scoring and breaking glass to polishing off the finished piece over a number of weeks.
Her students, some whom come from as far as Westerly, will tell you that Karyn’s positive energy sparks an exciting class each week. Her shop, Holidaze Stained Glass-My Free Spirit, truly lives up to its name. “Karyn is a free spirit,” Nancy Corelli from Johnston, RI told us. “She’s very thoughtful, she’s very caring, she truly loves her work and she truly loves us as people.”
During class, Szaro is ping-ponging from table to table, working with her students every step of the way. “I love spinning between people. It’s a natural high, it just is. You can’t explain it any other way.” All that expended energy does come at a price. “Sometimes I’m exhausted because it’s such a high level of energy,” Karyn explained. “That’s okay though, because it’s a good exhausted. It is because I did what I set out to do. It was purposeful.”
Despite the fatigue one might feel after teaching such a high-energy class, there is no stopping Karyn when she has some “me time.” “I am an adventure seeker. I’m an adrenaline junkie,” Karyn said. “I need to be in New Hampshire and White Mountain National Forest on my snowmobile going 45 miles an hour because it’s fun and it gives me that rush. I raft, I snowshoe, I jet-ski. I want to dive with the sharks, that’s on my agenda.”
Whether it’s the autumn leaf frame hanging in the window or the lighthouse night light, Karyn Szaro’s connection to nature is quite evident when you enter her stained glass shop. “We live in New England, so seeing the brilliant colors of our leaves changing is just amazing. Where I grew up, all the backyard was woods and I was playing manhunt and making meatballs out of mud and all of that.”
As Karyn’s students begin to walk past those ornaments in the window and make their way out the front door, they remind us of one last thing. “It’s about so much more than just the glass,” Gerri Fox of Warwick exclaimed. “It’s definitely about the community, too. I’ve built great friendships and relationships here.” When asked about how it feels to nurture these relationships, Karyn Szaro’s answer was simple. “In my heart, that makes me full.”
