After two years of building their home, Dayna, her husband Scott, and their children, Sadie and Samuel, have finally settled onto their land. The house is not entirely finished yet, she says, but people and livestock are in place and ready for their first winter in Bethel. She might have just moved to town but Dayna has been participating in the Bethel community for several years now. She took part in the first holiday pop-up shop and in subsequent ones, taught a mosaics class at Bethel University, and donated the resulting work of art to the community. You can see it hanging in the Arnold Block.
Dayna studied stained glass in the East Bay of California, working under some of the best glass artists and crafters in the country and learning all aspects of the industry. She says she fell into her calling, just by being where she was supposed to be when she was supposed to be there. The craftsmanship of building a work piece by piece appealed to her; as she writes on her website, “My hands were meant to work with these tools. Within my first few years in the field I found myself building commissions, teaching classes, restoring windows and lampshades and creating my own pieces of glass art.” Eventually Dayna moved back East, drawn by her love of the changing seasons, history, gardening. She settled in Vermont, married, and became a mother. A teaching artist, she travels to various art schools and other locations between Maine and Vermont with a set of courses she developed. Dayna feels incredibly grateful to be able to do what she loves in a place she loves.
Dayna will be teaching two more classes at the Arnold Block during our Art & Appetizers series: On December 5 it’s Ephemera Jewelry & Keepsake Ornaments, which uses a stained-glass method to press vintage paper ephemera and collage between sheets of clear glass. On February 20 she’ll be offering her popular Mosaic Jewelry class, in which you’ll employ mosaic techniques to create beautiful, unique pendants out of tiles and pottery shards. Learn more about all of the classes and register here.