The Hidden-Away Glass Artist
by Celia Hayes
You know, I am almost going to have to take the camera with me everywhere, or buy a memory card for my cellie and learn to use the camera function, because there are occasions which just cry out for a lot of pictures to be taken, and today was one of them. Last spring, my daughter and I had begun the Sunday morning habit of walking the dog on various stretches of the Salado Greenway. We left off doing this when it just got too darned hot, even on the most thickly-wooded leg – that between Ladybird Johnson Park and Oakwell Farms. This last weekend, we started up again, though – and I had it in mind to hike the stretch from Oakwell Farms down to where the trail currently dwindles down to practically nothing at Rittiman. For a goodly part of that leg of the Greenway, it parallels Holbrook Road, running past a scattering of houses, several large churches, an extensive blackberry tangle, the site of the 1842 Battle of Salado, and Victoria's Black Swan Inn, which is supposed to be the most thoroughly haunted place in San Antonio. Well, we are coming up to Halloween, aren't we?
It was a wonderful morning, cool and not too breezy, the bicycle traffic was light to moderate, and very courteous – the riders called out to us, upon coming up from behind, and there was actually some water in Salado Creek, from the rain a couple of weeks ago.
Just by the side driveway into the Black Swan premises, we noticed there was a sign for a glass studio, and on an impulse we decided – what the heck! We'd walk up the long graveled driveway – which seemed to lead nowhere but into a tangle of sheds, aging automobiles and assorted intriguing junk – pretty much your basic funky rural collection.
At the top of the hill, the driveway curved around, underneath a tall pecan tree and a huge old wooden water-tank elevated on tall posts – and there was the glass studio, housed in a tidy little shed in the back-forty of the Black Swan, and Mr. Howard Redman the glass artist, who seemed to be just hanging out on a Sunday morning. But oh – the glass! My mother did stained glass, but her stuff was nothing as to Mr. Redman's: stained and fused glass – the side of his workshop was covered with fused-glass platters, no two of them alike. He also does lampshades in the Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie style, some of them mounted on vintage metal bases, and he showed us one of several thick albums of past work, most of them for serious quantities of money: panels and windows, some of them in the monumental Tiffany style. The most spectacular of these was eight feet square, more or less – and contained something like 4,000 separate pieces.
The original panel is now in a place in Chicago; otherwise you would not have been able to drag me away for ooh-ing and ah-ing. We were just no end impressed at finding this outpost of art, hidden away. And next time – I will take the camera. Mr. Redman does not have a website, being possibly the last working artist in the world to not have one, but there you go. Artists can do pretty much as they darned please. Just take my word for it – his stuff is sublime. 1006 Holbrook Road. Past the enormous hanging wind-chime and the 1940 vintage ambulance and bear right at the rusting remains of what looks like an old restaurant stove.
There is a saying which has been kicking around in the back of my mind for years, to the effect that you do not find your pets – they find you. In some cases, usually those of the feline persuasion, they are the ones who actively pick you, by moving in and making themselves at home. Now and again, dogs have also been known to do this: most recently in my case, the little black dog that I nick-named 'the little shadow' which my daughter found running around in the street in front of a highly trafficked neighborhood yard-sale a number of weeks ago. A nice little black dog, very affectionate, well-behaved and clean, of a certain age in dog-years, and giving evidence in the fact that he had been neutered, tail-bobbed and taken to a groomer within a few weeks of being found . . . all of this indicated to us that he had simply become separated accidentally from a doting owner, and returning him would be a piece of cake.
There is a world of difference between a dog who is a beloved pet, and whose people are frantically searching, and that the sort of dog who has been dumped, but it seems that lately that difference has become sadly narrowed. All the usual and familiar avenues of returning a lost dog were explored and came up empty in this case. Eventually, all we could think was that perhaps his owner had died, or become incapacitated, and whoever was sorting out the household couldn't be bothered to do any more than drive to a nice neighborhood, open the car door and boot him out.
Wurstfest is a unique celebration rich in 
We did our usual ramble through the yearly 
Anyway, we hit the farmer's market first, and walked back through the Full Goods building, and curiosity led us into one of the offices, where there were a great many tables set out, piled with colorful scraps of this and that, and a table of handbags, market bags, purses and aprons set out.
So, the ladies of the Women's Pavilion had worked up a number of patterns – easy to use, especially if one is of an age to have taken home economics – and solicit volunteers to come and cut out the pieces for the various items from a bale of banners made available, which would be sewn together by experts . . . and sell the resulting items to fund the restoration of the Women's Pavilion. Some of the finished items were amazing, and ingenious – and of course the original banners had been extremely eye-catching and colorful as well. One couldn't not make something dull, given the original material, and they certainly would be durable enough.
The San Antonio building originally was paid for almost entirely by donations and subscriptions, and designed to fit the site: lots of light and air, multi-level and flat-roofed, in a classic 1960's modern style. Unfortunately, it fell into disrepair after the 
They say our drought will last throughout next year, too. We usually get about 36 inches of rain a year. We are only at 12 inches or so to date, down 15 inches from where we would normally be. Even if it does rain, the rains have to land on the Contribution Zone (click picture to enlarge) in order to fill up the aquifer. The Contribution Zone is north and west of San Antonio. It pretty much has to rain in the Texas Hill Country. Water then runs down the creeks and streams then drops into the caves and cracks/crevice in the earth in the Recharge Zone. The Recharge Zones are especially sensitive areas, as they are the last chance to keep unwanted runoff (chemicals, pollutants, etc.) from entering our water source.