Fettes couple rejuvenates Stu Stu Studio

By Corin Blust
Sun contributor
Tucked away on Aylsworth Street in Empire are Cheryl and Thomas Fettes, two artists enamored with the depth and luminescence of their respective media. Cheryl’s current medium is fused glass, though she has been working with glass in different ways for about 30 years. Thomas began painting abstract encaustics three years ago.

After Cheryl’s first class in glasswork, she thought she didn’t have much talent for working with cut glass, but loved it so she kept playing with it anyway. Then she found her niche in mosaics and fused glass.
“I was never that good at soldering and foiling and all that kind of stuff, but I kept doing it over the years, and then the mosaic thing started and I just fell right into it. The first one I ever made someone bought right out from under me, and it wasn’t for sale,” remembers Cheryl.
Her mosaics kept getting bigger, more elaborate, and heavier as they evolved “from birdbaths to benches to obelisks.” Then Thomas got Cheryl a kiln for Christmas that ignited her current obsession with glass fusing.
“A new love and a new way of playing with glass was born,” she continues.
After experimenting with the kiln for about six months, Cheryl went to New York and attended classes in glasswork at Hot Glass Horizons and Corning Glass Works Studio. There she learned more about her surprisingly difficult medium.
“It’s as much of a science as it is an art, because every kiln is different, and the temperature has to slow down at the right rate, at the right degree, otherwise it’ll shatter. And some glasses don’t fit with each other; they will cool and expand at different rates. It’s always a challenge — what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow, but I love it,” she insists.
Cheryl takes a mosaic approach to fused glass, melting carefully arranged compositions into landscapes inspired by the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Leelanau County. She also makes Giclèe prints of her glass landscapes, capturing the depth and feel of the glass without the heaviness.
“One of the things I liked about doing mosaic work to was that there was such a depth to it that a lot of people couldn’t get, so doing the [fused] glass work that I’m doing now, I work with so many layers so I can still get the depth,” Cheryl explains.
Her line of abstract fused glass jewelry is called Cher Wear, named with help from her background in computer programming.
“I went to college and was trained in computers, so I was involved in writing a lot of computer programs, and back a long time ago they used to have a lot of share ware out there, stuff that a developer would put out there for free for people to test and try out. In my computer brain — that was all I could think of — well, this is Cher Wear too.”
Thomas got inspired to work with encaustics after seeing an encaustic painting at River Street Gallery in Manistee.
“I just fell in love with it as a texture, and the colors stay really bright- they just last and last and I just like them,” he said.
Encaustic is an ancient form of painting that dates back to the Greek empire, when people used beeswax to patch seams in boats.
“Then they started mixing pigment in with it, and they started painting really colorful designs with it — it hardens fast, so you have to be quick with it, is the thing,” he explains.
Each one of Thomas’ encaustic paintings are made up of layer upon layer of locally produced beeswax. The base layers are plain undyed beeswax but Thomas adds color as the piece progresses, resulting in a depth and texture unique to encaustic.
“You can get great translucence out of this process. That’s one of the things I fell in love with, there gets to be so much depth in the painting itself, which I think is just cool.”
Thomas chooses to work abstractly because he enjoys having his forms capture a subjective mood and feeling rather than transmit a simple, clear image to the viewer, the way that traditional styles of painting do. By working abstractly, Thomas believes that his work will be enjoyed by almost everyone, since it’s easy to find an interesting image or feeling in an abstract work.
“I’ll look at it, and I’ll be in a mood, or the weather will be a certain way, and I’ll just work with it… and all of the sudden the painting is done — I do one more thing, and I’m not going to like it. Drawing a perfect leaf doesn’t do a mood for me, it doesn’t capture what I may be thinking at any given time,” he says.
Thomas recently entered one of his encaustics in a show sponsored by Gallery 50 in Traverse City, and was delighted to find out that he won an Honorable Mention.
“This was the first time he entered a contest, and there were 300 entries, 60 were accepted, and he got Honorable Mention,” Cheryl fondly tells.
“I was absolutely thrilled,” shares Thomas. “This is something I’ve never understood before — to have somebody develop a connection with what you did. It’s just a neat feeling, really neat.”
Cheryl and Thomas run a small gallery called Stu Stu Studio in their home at 10180 Aylsworth Street in Empire. The gallery is open from noon to five on Fridays and Saturdays during the summer, from Memorial Day thru Labor Day. Call (231) 326-5684 for an appointment if you are unable to stop by during business hours, or check out their websites: www.cheyenneglass.com, and www.artfolios.org/ThomasFettes. Cheryl’s work is also on display at Bellstone Gallery and Watermelon Sugar Gallery in Traverse City.