Artistic brother and sister complete wall made mostly from recycled glass

WASILLA — An artistic pair of siblings recently finished a unique piece of art, a garden wall that is made of about 75 percent recycled glass from wine and liquor bottles.

Karen Groendyke and her brother Brian Dobias spent nine days painstakingly assembling a wall made of glass tiles on top of a concrete flower planter located in Groendyke’s home driveway.

“We’re very happy with it and proud of it. It was a very fun project with my brother,” Groendyke said.

The finished product came in around 9,200 square feet, according to Dobias. He said they ended up using about 96 cases of bottles, and about 365 wine and liquor bottles.

Dobias owns a studio called Fine Art by b in Indiana, and Groendyke owns a glass fusing business called New Life Glass Designs in the Mat-Su Valley. Groendyke said that a majority of the glass material came from her surplus of wine and liquor bottles that were donated to her business over the years.

“It wasn’t without challenges,” Dobias said.

The brother and sister duo are both in their 60s and were fairly exhausted after this physically demanding project that turned out to be more work than they originally anticipated.

“I’m going back to glass fusing,” Groendyke said with a laugh.

Happy and relieved. It felt like finishing a college exam at the end of the semester,” Karen

Since Dobias was visiting from Indiana, he said there was an added sense of urgency to complete the project before he had to leave. He said it took several long shifts that took up most of the day, but he was thankful for the steady supply of warm weather and light to work in under Alaska’s famous midnight sun.

“We were really driven to do it,” Dobias said. “It’s one piece at a time

Dobias said this particular peojct may have been outside their normal wheelhouse, but they made their vision come to life. He said that he’s proud of the final product and he feels gratified for sewing the project through to the end.

“It’s just immensely rewarding,” Dobias said. “I think everybody should try to do that whether they’re artists or not. Everybody’s got that thing they’re not sure they can pull off and they should just go for it. You’d be surprised. Once you get into it, you start to figure stuff out along the way. We did a lot of problem-solving on that wall. As we went, we got smarter, wiser, and better; and kept going.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com