Baldwin transformed the medieval stained glass art form to suit his original design concepts, depicting interpretive landscapes, sculptural forms, abstractions, and otherworldly objects. Notably, his design idiom is rich with three-dimensional cues, giving his many works a unique departure from conventional flat glass art. This original direction appears in residential and corporate commissions in Vancouver, B.C. Eugene, Oregon, and Waikiki, Hawaii.

Tower, 84″X48″, hand blown German antique glass, 1979

Commissioned by the City of Eugene, Oregon in 1979 for placement in the Eugene public library, Tower uses a chorus of lines creating strong perspective to lead the eye through the forms: the tower, the wing, and the ribbon. A key departure from conventional stained glass art is Baldwin’s treatment of foil lines. Here, the lines at the bottom of the articulated tower shapes are wider than at the top: They taper in perspective. The same is true for the lines composing the wing. The lines therefore read as objects in 3D space instead of a depthless armature for a flat window.

Shadows of the ribbon appear to “fall” onto other forms, creating the sense of space and volume.

In 1978, Baldwin published an article in the magazine Glass Studio, explaining ten conceptual techniques for producing three dimensional effects in art glass.

Three Planes and Ribbon, 36″X20″, hand blown German antique glass, 1979

Three dimensional illusions in flat glass art were always of interest to this artist, who gathered ten different techniques for bringing the third dimension into his panels. In the case of Three Planes and Ribbon, at left, these “drawing rules” launched a joyride of color and form projected upon the open sky beyond. Another palace of dreams.

Chapel Window, 108″X59″, hand blown German antique glass, 1995

Designed and fabricated at his Hawaii studio in 1995, this altar piece was central to the design of a wedding chapel at the Nikko Ilikai Hotel, Waikiki. Six separate panels register an image of nine by five feet at the focus of the chapel, comprising the compound image of a dove, a lotus flower, and the tree of life.

Any sort of realism is notoriously difficult in cut glass, because of what the glass itself will tolerate, but this project’s size allowed Baldwin to approach representation more closely than with most of his smaller pieces.

The backlit panels cast a sense of peace upon the overall lighting of the space.

Parallel Harmony Fisheye, 38″X23″, hand blown German antique glass, 1978

Baldwin approached the parallel harmony theme he’d initiated in 1978, with a distorted view of curvilinear perspective. Again the image concept remains: three rectilinear pillars or columns, variously tilted, to provide sections of shadow and comparative brightness, and thus indicate a solid 3D object. This design element is also part of the Tower image above.

A ribbon form spinning through the space casts shadows on the glass faces, which further highlights the dimensionality of the design.

Derek, 39″tall, constructive glass mirror sculpture, 1978

In 1977, designer Gerald Dowell of the Vancouver B.C. firm Hopping Kovach Grinnell, asked Baldwin if he’d ever worked in stainless steel. The answer to that was no, but the artist experimented with mirror glass and produced a maquette which showed both himself and Dowell that cut mirror could be joined using the copper foil technique and formed into a three dimensional solid.

This led to a piece Baldwin constructed for display at the Crown Zellerbach corporate offices in Vancouver BC.

Vortex 32, 36″X36″, hand blown German antique and hardware glass, 2004

In 2003, Baldwin spent time in Sedona, Arizona, searching out the storied energy vortices which exist there. One such visit inspired an ‘energy drawing’ from those days, which he later simplified into this art glass impression, Vortex 32, at left.

Here, the ribbon wandering through the space casts no shadows, there is no sense of dimensionality in the design. The artist allowed this to be a flat depiction.

Spirits Rising, 30″X21″, hand blown German antique glass, 1978

This image, the only slide Baldwin owned of a 1977 panel, recently became fit to display thanks to the image generation smarts of Perplexity.ai.

As to the work itself, it was a one-off, an afternoon of free sketching which quickly produced a full size working drawing. The window was created using scraps from other projects, and destroyed a year afterward during an attempted theft at the client’s home.

Clearly one of his wildest drawings.

Diptych Moderne, 30″X68″, hand blown German antique and hardware glass, 1978

While playing with Art Deco themes, Baldwin explored the idea of a glass diptych in which the two sides are identical mirror images, with the exception of the yellow ribbon, which is not mirrored, but simply duplicated in both designs.

For this light modernist piece, the artist did not seek the third dimension so prevalent in earlier work.