This Crystal Lake glass artist’s last name is Bacon, and it helped him win $10K

When he was a student at Madison West High School in Wisconsin, Craig Bacon discovered glass art. For the past three decades, Bacon has worked on honing his glass art skills and eventually made it his side hustle.

Today, Craig Bacon is a Crystal Lake-based glass artist who runs his own studio, Craig Bacon Studio, although his glass art business is not his main source of income.

“I’ve always been a night and weekend guy,” said Bacon, whose day job is a furniture designer.

Bacon currently is an independent contractor in the furniture design business, and he describes his day job as “engineering with some beauty.”

Recently, however, Wright Brand Bacon started a promotion to give $10,000 to people with the last name Bacon to improve something in their lives. Someone from a Chicago-based public relations firm reached out and set up interviews by phone and Zoom to learn about Craig Bacon. Bacon told them about his stained glass business and how he’d like to expand his studio.

The company selected Bacon as the winner of $10,000, and sent a film crew of 10 to 12 people who spent the day at his house filming promotions and cooking bacon. Bacon said he received 36 pounds of bacon from the company.

“I thought that was a really great partnership and unique pairing.”

Creativity runs in the Bacon family. Bacon’s father, Lane, runs a woodworking business and is based in Verona, Wisconsin, a suburb of Craig’s hometown of Madison. Bacon’s great-grandfather was an ironworker who made a lamp that currently resides in Craig’s living room. Bacon himself made the stained glass lampshade design that sits on the lamp.

Lane Bacon has been doing woodworking for 50 years, and said he is looking to retire from the business. Bacon’s work has been on display in locations around Dane County, Wisconsin, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Madison.

While living in Wisconsin, Craig Bacon was active in the area art scene, participating in the Dane County Art Fair Off the Square among other art events, which featured Wisconsin-based artists. Dane County also hosts an Art Fair on the Square each summer where national artists are highlighted.

Both Bacons’ work has appeared in galleries in Paoli, Wisconsin, and Stoughton, Wisconsin, both of which are near Madison, and Craig Bacon is trying to find galleries in the area for his work.

Most of Bacon’s clients come from word-of-mouth, and a lot of his clients are from the Midwest. He designed a sauna window for a client in International Falls, Minnesota, and a window for someone in Georgia.

Despite moving to Illinois four years ago, Bacon said he doesn’t have many clients in the area, but he designed a window in the Woodstock Opera House.

Several years ago, Bacon found Judson Studios, a Los Angeles-based glass art studio, on Instagram and learned about a stained glass window project at the Church of the Resurrection, a megachurch based in the Kansas City area. The stained glass window is in Leawood, Kansas.

“Everyone loved it and they had notoriety,” Bacon said. “I have to know how these were done.”

He continued to look at Instagram posts. Eventually, one of the designers of the stained glass windows in Kansas City, Tim Carey, began offering classes. Bacon said he started taking Carey’s classes in 2020.

In early 2022, Bullseye Glass, a company that makes glass for glass makers, had a Zoom call with Narcissus Quagliata, a glass artist based in Mexico. Bacon signed up for the call and began taking classes from Quagliata. He’s in his third Quagliata class.

“There’s always something to learn,” Bacon said. “You can never soak it all in.”

Bacon said he would love to offer classes to community members, but his studio is currently too small to accommodate participants. He said when he was moving to Illinois, he struggled to find a property that would work for his studio. Bacon’s studio is out of his garage, and he plans to expand his studio when he has the funds to do so.

Lane Bacon joined his son for the filming of the promotion, and said he received 12 packages of bacon, some of which he has given to friends and family and some of which he is creatively using in meals.

“It was nice and an honor for him to be selected,” Lane Bacon said.

Craig Bacon has not decided exactly what he’ll do with the prize, but he hopes to expand his studio to eventually teach classes. He said he recently saw an article out of Great Britain claiming stained glass is a dying art. Bacon is passionate about teaching classes to younger people and keeping the art of stained glass alive.

Once he retires, he is looking forward to being in glass art full time and continuing to bring other people’s ideas to fruition.

“I like taking someone’s idea and manifesting it in glass,” Bacon said. “Work for people is where my heart is at.”