Optician, artist donates sculptures to nonprofits

Photos: Optician makes glass sculptures

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Jan Underwood/Dayton artist Kevin Harrington makes his free-standing stained glass sculptures for fun, not profit. "I have enough jobs, I don't need another one," says the professional printer and optician.

By Katherine Ullmer, Staff Writer Updated 11:24 AM Saturday, October 10, 2009

DAYTON — Life is not your everyday grind for Kevin Harrington.

Leaving the grinding of lenses for eyeglasses he sells in his Downtown Dayton Optical shop to others, he gets his pleasure from the artful glass work he does in the back after work.

He donates his stained-glass art to nonprofits, which auction it off for charity causes. Taking commissions and selling his art is “too much like work,” he said. “It’s very hard to create something that somebody else has in their mind.”

He’s donated the free-standing, free-form stained-glass pieces and mosaic works to the Ronald McDonald House, the Dayton Visual Arts Center, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the Stivers School for the Arts, and other nonprofits, bringing auction prices in the hundreds of dollars.

“We do a preview exhibition in the spring before our main fundraiser,” said Jane Black, executive director of DVAC. “That event is extremely important to our bottom line. We put his piece in our front window. It’s remarkable how many people stopped to look at it. It was so stunning.”

A mosaic he donated to the JDRF in 2006 brought in around $500 for research at its gala auction, said Karen Myers, executive director of the foundation.

Harrington, 54, learned how to fashion glass into art through apprenticeships with friends, and learned the optical trade, cutting and fitting lenses into frames, through a recent two-year apprenticeship, as a back-up job, he said.

A Michigan native who’s called Dayton home for 20 years, Harrington said he likes working with his hands and making things. He often uses big chunks of glass and clear lenses, some from old-style meat scales, to enhance his work.

“I can make things people don’t usually see in glass,” he said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2341 or  kullmer@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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