Iman Hathaway is making her world in glass. 

With its cozy setting and large windows, Ypsilanti's Dzanc House is the perfect place to experience Hathaway's Dreams of a Redbone exhibition, with iridescence reflecting through the gallery as an array of colors projects faint hues along the walls. 

“When I was younger, a lot of the stained glass that I was seeing in public spaces out and about was very much religious in nature, which is beautiful, but as a non-religious person, it didn't necessarily resonate with me,” the Ypsilanti-based artist and educator said. 

Drawn to the beauty of the medium but wishing to share her own message, Hathaway knew she wanted to incorporate women of color into her work.

“I really do not see women of color, or people of color at all, displayed in glass, except for when they're displayed as slaves. So I am really trying to create positive landscapes of portraiting women of color, displayed in rest, self-care, and abundance as opposed to just that colonial imagery,” she said. 

“Sometimes when you see stained glass artists, they're referring to pinks and tans as skin tone, and it's like, that's not everyone's skin tone,” Hathaway said.

In this project, she found great joy in playing with different shades of brown.

Two especially meaningful pieces include Kindred Venus II and Mona Lisa’s House. The titles reference historical artworks that tend to describe white or European features, but in Hathaway’s glass, they are reimagined to present women of color as powerful works of art in their own right.

In college, Hathaway studied engineering and computer science. You can see the history of this background in her chosen medium, the way she engages tools, uses mathematics, and crafts her own wood frames, even learning electrical wiring for a stained glass lamp she built. Hathaway chose her original field because she loved building things with her hands, but she realized that she wanted to pursue that love differently.

Triptych: Feed I, Pour I, and Warm, plus Let Go II (on top) by Iman Hathaway. Photo by Ana Gavrilovska.

A residency program at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, provided the foundation, but it was an old friend who enabled Hathaway to begin exploring glass. She had always been interested in glass but didn’t know where to start. At the time, Hathaway was taking figure drawing, which was intended to be the focus of her residency; the plan was to draw from live models and build up her portfolio. But right before she left, the old friend gave her a glass grinder that they had tried out themselves but couldn't quite figure out. 

The school provided a grinder, so Hathaway spent the entire residency working on glass. She was given studio space and plenty of time to pursue her own independent research, teaching herself techniques and finding community with fellow glass artists online. That was in 2022, and she’s been working with glass ever since. 

“It has taken over my life, but in a very good way because it absolutely satisfies my need for building with my hands,” Hathaway said. But she’s also a very figurative artist. “When I'm creating my women of color, I don't draw hyper-realistically. I'm very much drawing to capture the gesture of the shape and not have it be literal or exact.” This method has shaped her style as she continues to grow as an artist. Hathaway loves to work with curvy lines and very elaborate shapes that don’t always lend themselves well to stained glass. “But it's what I love,” she said. “It's not meant to be something that's easy to make. It's just absolutely my style.”

With Dreams of a Redbone, Hathaway gets to bring both artistic passions together in the form of her chosen subjects: femme figures drawn from live models and translated into glass with her signature curves and abstract shapes. The title of the exhibition is striking, drawing upon the multi-definitional history of the term "redbone," which has typically been used to refer to multi-racial individuals in general and a specific cultural group in Louisiana. Sometimes used as a pejorative, it has since been reclaimed. Hathaway elaborated in her artist statement: “Dreams of a Redbone culminates an ongoing search of finding one’s place in the Black Diaspora. Reclaiming this exonym recognizes the kindred mislabeled for their multitudes while creating landscapes to portrait their abundance."

Hathaway shared that she was once asked about political themes that a viewer saw in some of her artwork. “Personally, I think all of my artwork is political, even when I'm making roses,” she said. “What I'm doing is trying to make things that I want to see in my window that make me stop what I'm doing, stop working to stand in front of my window and absorb more light.”

Light figures heavily in the exhibition. In her artist statement, Hathaway described the overarching goal of her work in the stained glass medium as striving “to create art that catches the eye of the viewer and encourages them to make space and time throughout the day for actions of self care and rest while absorbing more light.” But because of the nature of the materials, the work also looks very different depending on the lighting at the time of the day during which it is seen. 

“Every time you look at it, it might look a little bit different,” Hathaway said. “A lot of the pieces that I use, I use an iridized glass, so it catches that front light. So maybe at night when it's dark behind it, you'll get that front-facing light, which looks really lovely. It was very fun at the opening reception to leave at night when it was dark and see the pieces look really vibrant from the outside because they're lighted from the inside.” In that sense, the sun is just as much a part of the artwork.

A repeated self-care-adjacent motif is teaware, which stems from memories of sharing the warm beverage with her mother as a child. “She would have a cup of chai and give me a sip, and then I would drink the whole thing. When I think of teaware, it's really a reminder to take care of myself and actually make the time to drink my tea,” Hathaway said. “The show definitely centers around a theme that rest is necessary for abundance. You can't just work, work, work. You have to take care of yourself.” 

The concepts are overtly combined in her triptych series, called Feed, Pour, and Warm & Let Go, while another piece features her mom. Called Mary Everywhere, Hathaway’s mother actually posed for this portrait, in which she is curled up on a chair in front of her window, reading and drinking her tea. “But my mom is not Mary,” Hathaway explained. “Mary is my Grammy, who passed a couple of years ago. The plant pictured is her plant that I have a cutting of, and my mom has a cutting of. She is ‘Mary Everywhere’ because the plant is growing and expanding.”

Actual flowers, foraged from the physical world, are pressed into some of her pieces, which include mirrors. Hathaway very deliberately created these utilitarian objects as art to depict people who don’t normally see themselves in the stained-glass medium. She recalled a statement made to her at a previous exhibition, about a different pressed-flower mirror. “They told me that they had never felt more beautiful,” Hathaway said. “That's really what I want, for people of color to see themselves surrounded by this mirror that makes them feel beautiful. The mirror is serving as a literal reflection of the people of color that I want to be able to see themselves in this work.”

Education is another theme that floats across Dreams of a Redbone. Many of the femmes are pictured reading, while a curation of Black authors is lined up on the mantle below the piece Tea in the Garden, a deliberate part of the exhibition that is also participatory: It’s an actual lending library. “I wanted people to be able to read something and gain more knowledge themselves because we can talk about all these things, but to really understand people of color in their stories, you should read their stories,” she said. 

Hathaway’s stained glass is ultimately complicated and simple at once, reflective of both a complex historical framework and literal curved shapes that can be tricky to create, while also expressing the beautiful clarity inherent to the experience of absorbing light. Merely living on this Earth is an inspiration, which she said can “tie back to so many things, but… really giving importance to this space now as opposed to the future.”

Ana Gavrilovska writes about music, literature, movies, and the arts for an assortment of print and digital publications, including her own newsletter, Sick Sad Motherslug.   

Dzanc House is at 402 South Huron Street, Ypsilanti. “Dreams of a Redbone” is free and open to the public on Saturday, August 15 from 6-8 pm and Friday, August 21 from 4-6 pm. The closing reception is Friday, August 28, 6-9 pm.