Artist likes to think big

By LAURA BEHENNA

Bigfork Eagle

Robin Gough makes her living in several different ways, and she considers them all art forms.

She expresses her creativity in massage therapy, stained glass, singing and caregiving for elderly clients.

"I love everything I do, and that's important," she said. "I think everyone benefits that way."

Although raised in Oregon, as a child Gough spent many summers vacations with her grandparents in Bigfork. She moved to Bigfork five years ago when she felt it was time for a change in her life.

"I love color and I love nature," she said, adding that both attracted her to the art of stained glass.

Gough learned the art 11 years ago from Jim Hunt, proprietor of Stained Glass Fantasy in Florence, Ore. She was enchanted with the creations in his gallery, and since she lived 200 miles away in Salem, he offered to teach her whenever she could visit.

Gough studied intensively with Hunt for more than 60 hours, over a series of four weekends.

"He said, 'Think big, don't think small,'" Gough said. He encouraged his students to start with a large piece to help them get over any fear they might have of working with glass. Gough chose to do a 20- by 30-inch work full of hummingbirds and morning glories. She couldn't bear to part with it, and it now hangs in her home on the Swan River.

She has a smaller but similar piece hanging at Brett Thuma Gallery at 459 Electric Ave. in Bigfork, along with numerous smaller pieces, including a dolphin, hummingbirds, other real and imaginary birds, and flowers. She also donated a 30-by-18-inch image of a cross to her church, Crossroads Christian Fellowship in Bigfork.

Hunt taught Gough his seven basic steps to making stained glass art: Draw a design, make a pattern with the design, place the pattern pieces on the colored glass, cut and break the glass into pieces, smooth the edges, line the edges with copper foil and solder the pieces together into the finished creation.

"He has you do the whole seven steps over and over so you get really familiar with the process," Gough noted. "It's ingrained in you then, and you become confident."

Gough has an ambition to create a replica of a Tiffany lamp, and she traveled to Portland to purchase glass made from the same formula Louis Comfort Tiffany used in the early 20th century.

"I have all the glass to do a Tiffany water-lily lamp, and I want to do it as close to Tiffany style as possible," Gough said.

The lamp base and the mold alone will cost about two thousand dollars, and she's hoping to find a client who will commission her to make the lamp.

Gough is also a talented singer. A family legend has it that she could sing before she could talk, bursting into "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at a Thanksgiving dinner.

"My aunt swears by [this story]," Gough said, adding, "It sounds very far-fetched to me."

She sang in choirs throughout her school and college years, and as a youth missionary, she sang in Puerto Rico at churches, prisons, an orphanage and a drug rehabilitation center. She has sung at Taste of Bigfork and the Bigfork Art Festival for several years running, and will sing at the next art festival Aug. 5. Although she received classical voice training, she prefers jazz, standards, pop, ballads, country, R & B and contemporary Christian songs.

"I don't imitate anyone, but I do like to change my singing style according to the style of music I'm singing," she said. She likes "deep, rich, strong voices" like those of Patsy Cline, Karen Carpenter and Toni Braxton, whose songs she enjoys performing. "I would love to find an upscale lounge or restaurant where I could just facilitate a mood."

Gough's bread-and-butter vocation is massage therapy at her home-based studio or at clients' homes, where she provides Swedish, relaxation, deep tissue and sports massage, among other kinds. Aromatherapy, using the highest-quality essential oils she can find, complements her massage practice.

Gough can be reached at 250-2341.