THAT’S GLASS WENCH, To You!

Artisan Julie Hews-Everett Reflects on Creativity and Community

It happens all the time. Julie Hews-Everett will be sitting in her car on the ferry, only to learn that the passengers in the car behind her have spent the entire crossing trying to decipher her vanity plate: GLSWNCH.

BY ISABELLE HAINES PHOTOS COURTESY JULIE HEWSEVERETT

“They’ll say, ‘We’ve been behind you for half an hour, and we can't figure it out,’” Hews-Everett laughs. “So, it’s a bit of an inside joke.”

GLSWNCH is license-plate-speak for Glass Wench, a nickname a close friend gave to Hews-Everett years ago. She’s certainly earned the title. As the creator of Island Spectrum Design, she serves as designer, builder, retailer and instructor in all things stained and fused glass. You’ve probably seen her work without even realizing it. Hews-Everett’s art has been installed in homes, businesses, churches and schools around the island—and the world.

Before she became the island’s resident Glass Wench, Hews-Everett was a California girl. She grew up in Riverside as her family’s designated artsy kid, spending her childhood drawing, sculpting and throwing clay pots. Glass art came to Hews-Everett by way of a college extension course—and then promptly took over her life. Just a few years later, she was building windows and teaching classes through Judy Davies Design, a glass studio in Riverside.

During those same years, Hews-Everett married her high school sweetheart and welcomed two children. For the most part, motherhood and artisthood coexisted: “If my kids got sick, they came into the studio with a sleeping bag and slept in the corner,” she said. “It worked out great— I didn't have to worry about daycare.”

In 1993, 10 years into Hews-Everett’s window-building career, her husband changed office locations to Seattle, and the whole family moved to Bainbridge. Island Spectrum Design was the product of that first year in the Pacific Northwest. Hews-Everett started her business with $750 and a handful of ads in the Kitsap Sun. By 1994, she was teaching classes in both stained and fused glass through the parks district.

“After we moved up here, I really got my own identity,” Hews-Everett said. “People would say, ‘Oh, you're the glass lady. Oh, you're the one that did that.’”

Starting over in the Pacific Northwest ended up being a major creative charge for Hews-Everett, a homecoming to a place she’d never been. Once she got used to the rain, of course.

“It took about two years. I was like, ‘It’s so cold! It’s so gray!’ But …” Hews-Everett holds up her phone, her lock-screen set to a neon sunrise over a rocky beach, “… how does that not inspire you?”

Along with geometric patterns, Northwest motifs are ubiquitous in Hews-Everett’s work. Trilliums, evergreens and mountains fill up her windowpanes and lampshades. Her largest and most complicated piece to date is a commissioned, 45-square-foot tableau of Mount Rainier during wildflower season.

“It’s my Sistine Chapel,” she said.

She works out of a home studio at the head of Fletcher Bay, where she teaches classes, works on commissions and repairs, and generally putters around. You could call it a Studio of One’s Own, but the space is more communal than that. It’s where Hews-Everett has forged lifelong friendships with students, some of whom have been taking her classes for 25 years. During the surreal first summer of the pandemic, the space was a precious bubble of normalcy for the neighborhood kids to come and make things. Even on quiet days, her 15-pound tuxedo cat, Star Lord, keeps her company as she works.

Hews-Everett welcomes the throngs. As a devoted teacher and self-identified Chatty Cathy, she finds purpose in other people. Often, that means helping students see their own potential. “When I teach a class, students say, ‘Oh, I can't do it. I'm not artistic.’ And I always say you don't have to be. There's no failure in this class.”

In particular, she loves the moment when beginners assemble and solder their first piece. “They hold (the glass) up to the light, and, wow, the looks on their faces,” Hews-Everett said, cracking a smile. “The joy that it brings them is what really keeps me going.”

Almost 30 years after founding Island Spectrum Design, the Glass Wench is looking toward a soft retirement. But does that mean an abrupt end to designing and teaching? Really, it’s a silly question— Hews-Everett laughs and shakes her head. “Oh, no. I can't stop! My students won’t let me.”