Swiss Cheese and Power Tools

I’m goin’ on a road trip.

My booth at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival needs some tweaking. Take one Subaru Outback, load it with power tools, air mattress, cold drinks, etc. and I’ll be on my way.

The booth in question

“But it looks fine!” you say.

“Thanks.” I say.

The problem is that glass eats light.

I swiss cheese’d (my pet term for adding structurally senseless holes in a perfectly good building) the front of my booth last year. The photo below, taken from inside the booth demonstrates perfectly the problem at hand. I need people to start to walk by and be stopped in their tracks by beautiful stained glass, with the conclusion, of course, being that they:
a) come in
b) look around
c)buy something.

But since stained glass is always viewed from inside a building, this creates a bit of a problem.

A Visual of "Swiss Cheese-d"

A friend of mine (Thanks, DAVE!) and I thought up a solution last year. (It was a tag-team effort where one idea led to a cascade of a-to-b-to-c-to-solution.)

Dave

So out I head, with power tools in tow, to swiss cheese the back of my booth. I’m going to try to make a whole bunch of shutters too, so that they can be closed when a piece sells, thereby blocking out extraneous light. Because of the way the light falls in the booth, I think by adding openings in the back, the pieces should shine like they are back-lit.

Wish me luck. I think I’ll need it, ’cause dang it, I’m a glass artist. Not an architectural engineer.