The first thing that strikes you when looking at a Cavalieri stained glass window is the fine patterning and detail giving the ambience of a medieval church. But then be prepared for the double take. Isn’t that Lisa Simpson? And doesn’t that bird have two heads? And isn’t that a guy in a swimsuit? Oh, yeah, these are not your grandparent’s stained glass windows.

Joseph Cavalieri’s early background in the the ‘90s was Art Directing for popular magazines such as GQ, People and Good Housekeeping and it doesn’t take long before you recognize the fun he’s now having with pop culture. A New York native, he attended UrbanGlass in Brooklyn in 1997 and continues to teach there now. He opened his studio, CAVAglass, in 2009.

“My aim is to expand the use of stained glass. Get it out of the church and into galleries, museums and people’s homes. I feel this lost technique deserves more public enjoyment. For the past year and a half, I’ve been working with characters from the Simpson’s TV series, placing them into stained glass, and killing them off. It seems like the Simpsons writers relate to this idea, 2 of them have bought my work, and one of my stained glass panels (The Moment of Death) currently hangs in the LA offices where the Simpsons series is written.” Cavalieri’s latest work is a collaboration with cult comic creator, R. Crumb.

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