June Bell
Stained glass artist June Bell grew up in San Diego, California. She moved to Manhattan, Kansas at the age of twenty-three and met her future husband, Joe Bell, whose boyhood home was Cottonwood Falls. His parents ran the Jim Bell and Son Clothing Store there. As Joe and June planned their wedding to be at the family’s pasture swimming pond, they decided to make the Cottonwood Falls area their home.
As a child June’s father worked for a glass company and she remembers a glass cutter always sticking up out of his shirt pocket. Her father’s co-worker and good friend taught himself the Tiffany method of crafting stained glass, even custom beveling glass for his windows. His beautiful works of art proved to be the seed of inspiration for June’s interest in working with glass. Soon after her marriage, June heard of a young couple teaching stained glass in Newton, and drove through ice and snow to get there for her lessons.
Most of her glass pieces have been made for friends and family through the years, but several have been commissioned. Drawing all her own patterns, she takes the time and uses the materials that will show her love for the craft in each piece she puts together. June has a small workshop in her home that sits on a bluff above the Southfork of the Cottonwood River in the heart of the Flint Hills.