The sun casts blue light through celestial images on a rectangular stained-glass work projecting out above the Stained Glass Works and Antiques of Corning storefront at 85 East Market Street where master craftsman and artist Joe Barlett has a shop and studio. Here he creates, repairs, restores, teaches, and sells stained glass. Instead of retiring after nearly four decades of work as a school counselor in Hughesville, Pennsylvania, he followed his love of stained glass art.

It loves him back.

In his early twenties, as a recent college graduate, he spent a summer in Reading apprenticed to Leonids Linauts, who needed help with the handling and restoration of heavy church windows. A renowned artist who came here from Latvia in the late 1940s, Linauts inspired Joe to begin his own glass studio—he used space in his grandmother’s former corner grocery store in Hughesville. That same grandmother had predicted, as she watched then-toddler Joe draw, that he’d grow up to be an artist.

For thirty years, during the time he worked as a counselor in school, he also taught night classes in stained glass at Bloomsburg University and the Pennsylvania College of Technology. In 2010, when he retired from counseling, he opened his shop in Corning, and taught classes there. A few years later he also began teaching at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass.

For level one students, “we start with straight pieces to teach technique, then teach them to cut circles,” he explains. Students get their own set of tools, an understanding of techniques, and several pieces they’ve made with their favorite colors, ready to hang in a window. Participants in level two classes learn how to create a window using curved as well as straight shapes.

“I get so much satisfaction out of teaching,” Joe says. “I get them turned on to stained glass and they run with it. They learn the correct way.” He changes the statement with a small laugh. “They learn Joe’s way. I’ve been doing it for fifty years, so I think I know what I’m doing.”

For students who want to learn and don’t want to invest in a huge variety of glass and a solo studio, he runs nine group sessions, meeting at the shop several days a week. One Thursday group regularly begins with pizza.

As a session begins, glassmakers carry in their tools, retrieve their labeled tray containing their work in progress, and get down to business at a spot along the well-lit workbench. The more advanced glassmakers might work with their own design, one from Joe’s extensive library of stained glass design books, or from something found online. Paper patterns are traced, placed atop the colored glass, and cut with a glass cutter. Special breaking pliers help trim the piece close to size. Students use a grinder to fine tune and smooth the piece, allowing them to wrap copper foil around its edges without injury. When the foiled pieces fit together, they’re soldered on both sides.

“Solder is your friend,” one of the students calls out, quoting Joe. Solder can help define what the eye sees while subtly filling in tiny spaces so the finished piece won’t have gaps.

The people who work together on glass have become more than friends in the years they’ve been meeting weekly. Joe calls them, with good reason, his “stained glass family.” He might help adapt a design, locate the exact right color needed from the thousands stored on edge along the store’s long, many-cubbied storage wall, and offer gentle encouragement. Connie Wemple, Joe’s girlfriend, fell in love with Joe—and then the art of stained glass—about a dozen years ago. She’s there, working on projects during every class. While Joe often circulates during a work session to make sure everyone’s project is proceeding smoothly, Connie is another person class members can turn to for advice. A recent group ended with a surprise repast of quiche, fruit, and cake to celebrate Connie’s birthday and her recovery from an illness.

“You learn something every day in here,” Joe says, adding he learns from students too. “It’s an ongoing experience between all of us. The main goal is to come up with a finished piece that’s well designed with good color choices. I suppose it’s like therapy when you get a piece accomplished.”

“We support each other. It helps us look at each other in a different way,” contributes another student. “You find your tribe.”

Four former students sell their stained-glass work at the shop. Some, like Jen Johnson, whose interest in stained glass was kindled in the early 1970s and who began working in the studio about a dozen years ago, do commissions for other people.

“The biggest thing is not to be a perfectionist. Would you notice an imperfection if you were driving past it at twenty-five miles per hour?” she asks, quoting Joe.

While finished work may be admired at the Stained Glass Works and Antiques of Corning Facebook page, there’s nothing like seeing it in person. On a recent Friday morning, customers entered, talked to Joe and Connie, and looked and looked. The storefront windows are layered with large and small work. Shelves hold lamps with stained glass shades, ornamental and antique glass lines shelves, and even humble pieces one might recognize from grandma’s kitchen, like a glass citrus juicer or a colored-glass butter dish, seem elevated by their proximity to Tiffany-style stained glass creations.

Over the door is a tribute to Molly, Joe’s studio dog, a beloved dachshund who died a few years ago. The original, much smaller piece was designed by one of Joe’s students; with her permission, he made a larger version for display.

Carole Robinson, a visiting stained glass artist from Scotland, has her own studio, mostly creating church windows, and is here to do research at the Corning Museum of Glass.

“It’s like heaven here, so organized!” she enthuses. After an animated conversation, she invites Joe and Connie to visit her in Scotland, and they discuss plans to do so, despite Joe’s admission to being a workaholic.

At the back of the shop is his workspace, where he’s currently crafting a four-season set of panels for a customer, with different birds and different foliage for each. With repairs and commissions and teaching, “the only problem is, I don’t have time to do my own work.”

Yet, “I like to travel,” Joe says. “Last March, Connie and I went to Ireland.” They toured in company with fifteen people from the Thursday night group. “It was a lot of fun. So yes, I’ll close the store for a few weeks and go to Scotland.”

And he’ll come back with new ideas.