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Her creations mix and mingle with nature, accepting a drop of rain to sparkle in the sunlight that’s sure to follow. Connie Carlisle says her works of art “talk to me.” Fortunately for her and us, they talk to others too. Carlisle mixes throw-away pieces of glass and near “toss outs” with actual glass of value and from that combination come her garden art that she calls Capriccios of Glass. She smiles as she talks about growing up “near” Chanute, Kansas… well maybe not Chanute, but Buffalo, Kansas… and again, not quite. She grew up on a farm some three miles from Buffalo and she said farms are where youngsters “get to use their imagination” and in her case she took her cues from a grandmother who could do everything from roof her own home, to running a café and she “also drew, she drew beautiful pictures.” “She was” says Connie, “my inspiration.” “I wanted to do all the stuff she could do,” and so Connie studied art, married, raised a family and still “had to feed my soul” she says softly. Feeding meant staying in touch with her artistic side. Many years later, flipping through a magazine she spotted something that drew her attention more than most other things. She saw a little three piece glass sculpture that used a wine bottle as a theme and she thought to herself, “You know, that’s cute but it can be better,” and so she started tinkering with various glass shapes until she made her first piece of Capriccios of Glass that she gave to a friend. They are just any combination, she says now. “They have to speak to you.” That first piece, she smiles softly, “looked pretty cool.” “It sparkled in the sun” and she made another and still another and pretty soon, she said, “the reaction of others” led her on. Today she can be found prowling garage sales and “mining” for glass to fashion just the right pieces into sparkling towers of art in her small studio hidden in the trees of East Texas. She talks about affordability… her pieces range from more than two feet high to more than five feet and her most expensive piece is less than a C note, though she hasn’t quite figured out how to ship her art. “I suppose,” she smiled, “I’ll have to figure that out.” Our guess is, that’s exactly what she’ll do… In the meantime we hope you enjoy the pictures of her glass as much as we do.. She can be reached at
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