SUTHERLAND, Iowa | A sprawling, single-story 1950s building that formerly served as South O'Brien Middle School, is now a studio where Jeanne and Mark Bogenrief and their team craft and restore intricate stained glass windows, doors, domes and lamps.
The couple bought the brick property at 220 W. Southern St. in the tiny town of Sutherland in 2004. The 30,000 square foot-space allowed them to consolidate their operation in one building.
"There's definitely an advantage to small-town America," says Mark Bogenrief, who has been in the stained glass business since 1978. "These schools are everywhere. Why can't they be put to use?"
The Bogenriefs have done their best to utilize every inch of the school. The lit trophy cases display blown glass made by their son Jesse. He has a studio in a former post office in Spencer. Their son Seth fuses glass, sandblasts and paints.
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School lockers, which have been refinished, serve as the ideal place to store orders and templates. Pieces of antique furniture and lamps with floral stained glass shades sit in the long hallway opposite the lockers.
The former boys and girls locker rooms have been transformed into the Bogenriefs' living quarters, while the gymnasium is a place to organize patterns, which are scattered on the wooden floor.
The production process, which for some windows, doors and domes takes years, starts with a design drawn by Mark Bogenrief. The design is copied and cut out to make a template. The pattern is transferred to glass and the pieces are cut out.
Those pieces are then painstakingly laid out on the original pattern and their edges are wrapped in copper foil. Jeanne Bogenrief solders the glass together.
"He always wants to challenge the crew to do better," she says of Mark Bogenrief.
On a Friday afternoon, Jim Benson cuts and fashions pieces of stained glass in a former English classroom while a Jimi Hendrix tune plays in the background.
He says the 10 foot by 12 foot "The Jungle" window composed of some 20,000 pieces was one of the team's most challenging works.
The window, which took three years to finish, was sold to movie producer/actor Tyler Perry, best known for dressing in drag to perform the Madea character. The window, which features a yellow-eyed elephant with bright white tusks peering through dense, colorful palms, ferns and flowers fetched six figures at a Georgia auction.
Another jaw-dropping piece created at Bogenrief Studios is a 24-foot dome crafted for a Versailles mansion in Windermere, Fla. It contains 153 different stained glass sections. Head to Terrace Hill, the Iowa Governor's Mansion in Des Moines, to find stained glass windows that were restored at Bogenrief Studios.
In a former science classroom, Gloria Rahbusch carefully selects numbered pieces of glass for a lady window and matches them to a template. Rahbusch, who attended school in the building, says she put puzzles together as a child, but they were never this challenging.
"I've never done anything like this in my life. I enjoy it very much," says Rahbusch, who has been employed at Bogenrief Studios for 10 years. "There's multiple times when you're finding No. 8. You handle that piece over and over again."
Next door to Rahbusch was the school's former reading room. Painted figures of children playing instruments and reading books peek out from curtains hung above the windows. Today, the space is a repair room. Windows from a local Methodist church that were damaged by BB gun pellets are stored along with antique windows from Chicago-based Walker Bros. Pancake House. The windows feature an image of composers and musical instruments.
Just off the gym at the back of the school is an area to create beveled glass -- a five-stage process of grinding, smoothing and polishing. It contains a rough cutting machine and cork and stone wheels.
A room at the far west end of the building houses a kiln. It was an industrial arts area as a high school and equipped with a garage door. The door was removed when it was converted to a middle school computer and special education room. The Bogenriefs installed a new automatic garage door.
They also replaced the building's original boiler and addressed various other issues to bring it up to code.
"The neighbor could hear it. It was like a jet engine. " Mark Bogenrief recalls of the boiler.
Since 80 percent of the studio's business is web-driven, he says he doesn't need to be located in a big city to attract clients. Customers that include CEOs and entrepreneurs fly in from Illinois, Georgia and other locations.
"You never know what you're going to find out here," he says with a chuckle.
