FROM GREEN THUMB TO GLASS THUMB

A stained glass village sits on a fireplace mantle in the rural Cape Girardeau home of Wilma Stratton. Much of her work appears in area churches.

Wilma Stratton of rural Cape Girardeau can take an 8-inch pencil plant and nurture it until it's 30 feet tall. She can grow a banana tree in her living room. She can also take pieces of stained glass and create impressive designs that light up the sanctuaries of many area churches.

Stained glass, an art with a thousand-year history, is one that has never lost its beauty and elegance.

Its first use in church windows dates to 969 A.D., and within several hundred years most of the churches in Europe gleamed with impressive, multi-colored stained glass windows.

Following a revival of stained glass making in France in the early 19th century, the art form began to appear in buildings other than religious.

These days, stained glass is everywhere -- in hotels, banks, restaurants, private homes and, of course, churches.

Stratton, whose living room is home to dozens of lush plants, says making stained glass artwork is her "first passion."

She says she loves tending her plants, "but I work with glass full-time, and I get carried away with it."

She started making stained glass artwork while she and her husband were building their home, in 1978. Her husband made a set of double doors and she made stained glass windows for them.

"I had no idea how to do it but I got a book and bought a glass cutter," she said. "And I had no idea how to use a soldering iron, but I bought one of them, too, and I practiced and learned."

Stratton fashioned a workshop in her basement and from there she draws the designs, cuts the glass, and fits it to other pieces of glass with lead and solder or copper foil and solder.

Her work graces the sanctuaries of Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna, Bethel Baptist Church in Jackson and the First Christian Church in Sikeston.

For several of the churches she made eight windows. One window is a simple yet elegant depiction of "The Last Supper."

At the Westwood Church of God in Cape Girardeau, where she attends, Stratton donated a stained glass piece for a door.

She has also done work for Ford and Sons Funeral Home, and for people wanting stained glass in their homes.

She did a piece for a home in Sikeston, and when the homeowners moved to Cape they commissioned her to do a stained glass creation of their house number.

"I did a fisherman in a rain hat for Fisherman's Net," she said, looking at a Polaroid of it in a scrap book. "When they closed the restaurant in Cape they took the glass to the new one in Sikeston."

Her work -- designs of flowers, landscapes, birds, horses, people -- can be found in doctors' offices and banks in the area.

"If a person has a hobby I'll do a picture of it, like a soccer player, a baseball player ... I did a buffalo, a beaver and I did a badge for a policeman in Sikeston. It gets interesting."

Stratton is working on stained glass creations with Christmas themes, and after the holidays she plans to be just as busy.

She doesn't advertise her business -- but she gets plenty of it by word of mouth. She thinks her work can be found in every state and says some pieces have been shipped to Japan.

"Yes, I like my tall plants, but stained glass is my first passion," she said, smiling.