Glass artist Polly Gessell’s exquisite work first caught my attention during the North Dallas Artist Studio Tour in Preston Hollow. Her delicate, ornamental details and designs are reminiscent of art nouveau palaces or chic art deco nightclubs. Impressively eschewing computerized aids, Polly sandblasts it all by hand and eye. We met for a talk at the Highland Park residence of Brad Batson, a longtime fan of her work who has many examples in his home.
“I had all sort of odd jobs for many, many years,” she said, after her three majors and five years at SMU. “I went to California, and I was going to be there nine days. I stayed for three and a half years.”
In La Jolla, she met the owner of a glass shop at a party and agreed to work for him in exchange for the use of his drawing boards and lights. After two weeks, he had her cutting stencils for glass etching, and she flowered into glasswork.
“When I came back here, I thought I’m going to be an overnight success,” Polly miscalculated. But a chance meeting with an intriguing sandblaster at a glass supply store on McKinney Avenue proved fortuitous.
“The guy said, ‘You can come teach yourself if you want to,’” she recalled. “So, I did. I learned to use texture. I love blasting through things that make it look more complicated than my having to really cut it. That kind of distinguished the look. And nobody else seemed to be doing that. I’m still learning, almost 40 years into it.”
Word of her creative work began to spread. At first, she thought a call from Wolfgang Puck’s now ex-wife, Barbara Lazaroff, was a joke played on her by friends. But a few months later, she found herself working on designs for Puck’s Westwood restaurant Eureka.
“I did about five, six restaurants with them, maybe more,” she recounted. “I did almost all of Stephan Pyles’ restaurants except for the last one.”
Polly has ardent collectors of her work, and her intricately sandblasted glass doors, panels, and bowls grace homes in the Park Cities and Preston Hollow. But her long artistic career hasn’t been without its adversity. A tornado destroyed her studio in 2019, among other challenges.
“Most art goes through a phase where it’s popular and then not,” she mused. “I haven’t been popular in a long time, but I think it’s coming back.”
A recent call on the coming return of Chef Avner Samuel’s Aurora restaurant to the area has Polly inspired.
“We’re going to do the same style that was in the old one,” she said, beaming. “So, that’s exciting.”
“My favorite period is between art deco and art nouveau,” she remarked of her enduring influences and sophisticated style. “You could be organic, and it could flow into something more geometric. I love that period, and I’ll probably always be stuck in that period, because there are too many ideas. I’ll never get to the end of the ideas.”
Author
Josh Hickman
Josh Hickman is a national award-winning journalist, visual artist, sometime musician, and author of seven books. His writing For People Newspapers often focuses on arts & culture, local small businesses, local history & government, and interesting personal stories. His paintings include a commission for Dallas County and a donation to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
