Local woman’s glass art gets national recognition

Kirk Baird

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000 | 11:24 a.m.

Stubborness. It's probably not the most practical of reasons to choose an art form.

But it worked for Las Vegas artist Leslie Rankin.

"I fell in love with glass because it constantly challenged me," she said. "Every other medium I work with bored me after a year and a half. I could mold clay and it would do anything I wanted it to. When I got into glass, I couldn't get it to do anything I wanted it to."

She doesn't seem to have that problem any longer.

Practicing what she calls "glassic art," a process of painting and carving on glass that she created 15 years ago, Rankin's home is full of her work -- from simple bowls and plates to colorful cubes and large wall hangings.

But that's just a small sample. The majority of her work can be found throughout Las Vegas homes and businesses, in everything from windows and countertops, to a three-story staircase with glass steps, and coffee tables.

"Modern Masters," a series on Home and Garden Television that focuses on craft aficionados around the United States, thought so highly of her glass creations it will devote a segment in its Monday program to Rankin and her work. The show will air at 7:30 p.m. on Cox cable channel 64.

"They were very complimentary," Rankin said. "The producer and photographer said it was the nicest finished product they'd ever seen. That was the highest compliment I've ever gotten because all they ever do is see artists across the country."

Rankin, who said before the show that she had preferred to avoid self-promotion to potential clients, was surprised that the network noticed her.

Through a profile in "The Architect's Sourcebook," an industry guide for the design community, "Modern Masters" learned of Rankin's unique art.

After some more photographic samples convinced them of her skills as an artist, "Modern Masters" decided to pay her a visit. Show representatives came out to Rankin's home, which doubles as an office for her and her four employees, to film the process involved in creating the glass art.

From there the crew went to various homes that featured Rankin's work and finished the day by taping an interview with the artist.

It was quite a heady experience for Rankin.

"When you pursue an art career, you think you're going to be dead 10 years before someone notices your work," she said. "So, when you're fairly young, for somebody to notice it, it's nice to be able to get that kind of recognition."

Kimberly Drake, series producer on "Modern Masters," said the show looks for artists who are leaders in their field. For the show, six Las Vegas artists were profiled, including three other others who work with glass. Rankin's innovative approach helped set her apart.

"One of the things that appealed to us is (Rankin) combined elements a lot of people don't do, like etched glass, or sand-blasted glass where you blast a fine stream of sand at the glass that cuts into it." Drake said. "Then she combines that with paint.

"She's not only one of the best glass people in Las Vegas, but one of the best in the country."

An art is born

Rankin's career began, sort of, at the age of 7, when she decided that she was going to pursue a degree in fine art.

"I didn't even know what it meant, but I knew that's what my destiny was at the time," she said.

Fifteen years later she realized that goal when she graduated from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Having skipped eighth and eleventh grades, Rankin was 16 when she enrolled in the six-year program at the university, along with 425 other freshman art majors.

During her studies Rankin focused on four different mediums -- painting, ceramics, drawing and printing -- switching off every year and a half.

It was in sculpture, however, that she found her passion, particularly working with metal and wood, which became her degree emphasis.

In 1981 after graduating with just the four remaining members of her freshman class, Rankin got married. Her then-husband owned a glass shop, where she taught herself how to work with glass. She began to make small leaded-glass works and would do etchings as well, such as on shower doors.

Six years later, after divorcing, Rankin moved to Las Vegas. In the booming city she saw potential for her work beyond decoration for the Tudor-style homes she worked on in Salt Lake City, such as Oriental, Mediterranean, and her favorite, contemporary motifs.

"You can jump all around and every decor you walk into is completely different," she said of Las Vegas homes.

She took a job with a small stained-glass company as a means of support, before going into business for herself eight months later.

Working out of her home, Rankin mainly worked with leaded and stained glass. She was a one-woman operation, doing everything from selling the jobs, designing the work, building the pieces in her garage and installation.

In her spare time, rather than putting her work aside, she continued to work with the medium, this time experimenting with the process of painting glass.

"Glass and paint don't like each other. Paint will fade or lose its color over time, especially in the intense desert sunlight," Rankin said.

So she would paint a piece of glass and put it outside for five months to test the paint's resilience. And for seven years she was disappointed.

Each time Rankin would retrieve the piece from her back yard, the paint had faded away. Determined to find a solution, she played the part of chemist, mixing and matching types of paints to find a permanent color coating.

Finally she got it right, she said, pointing to a small glass work, as vibrant now as it was when she painted it eight years ago.

Rankin continued to perfect the process, and as she became more confident in its lasting ability, she decided to offer her glass art to interior designers working on custom homes.

Two years ago she got her first big break when, after completing a stained- glass entrance for a family, she was asked to create a wall hanging to match the colors of fabric in its kitchen.

From there it wasn't long before she began to develop a reputation among builders who were interested in offering clients something different. Rankin became known for developing an unusual style of art that no other artist was practicing, at least in the styles she did, with vibrant colors sandblasted into various textures of glass. * "I have clients ask me all the time, 'Have you ever done this (type of art) before?' " Rankin said. "Well, no. If I've ever done it before I wouldn't be selling it to you because 50 other people would have it. We never repeat anything."

Sense of glass

Richard Baba is a not only a longtime friend of Rankin's but a client as well. Over the years Rankin has designed several pieces for him, including glass windows in the entrance of his Las Vegas home and a three-panel sculpture suspended by a thin piece of wire from the ceiling.

Titled "Eye to the World," the piece was the inspired by an open wall that Baba and his wife wondered how to fill.

"She said, 'Do you trust me?' I said, 'Implicitly,' and gave her full creative rein," Baba said. "She said, 'I'm going to do something that is going to blow your mind.' "

The result, he said, leaves friends staring in amazement, especially when lighting programmed specifically for the sculpture is used.

"I don't know anybody else who can do this stuff," Baba said. "I've been in a lot of hotels and seen things, but it looks so typical. Hers is so thought out. She really is one of a kind."

Other clientele besides Baba include high-tech businesses and various casinos, such as the Bellagio and Rio, as well as numerous homes in the area.

When asked how many was "numerous," Rankin said she had no idea, especially when considering each home often has more than one of her pieces of art.

For some art purists, the thought of counting a counter top as art would seem a bit of a stretch.

Rankin, however, said whenever she's hired to do a piece, it becomes art.

"I'm going to be doing applications of texture or color. We take in the frames of the home, the architectural lines, the fabric or the colors that are surrounding it. It's not just plain-old glass we're putting in there," she said. "They're paying for fine art as they would in a gallery."

Juggling her work with her home life -- she and her husband, Tim Yanchisin, have 4-year-old twins, Jamie and Julia -- Rankin is perfectly content to be "unknown," but she is practical. She knows the "starving artist" routine would not be conducive to her medium, especially since working with glass can be expensive.

For example, one slip of a sandblaster and a hole could be too deep, ruining the glass and forcing Rankin to start over.

"I work so I can afford to create," she summed up. "If I don't have the money to create, I can't do it."

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