Joe CapozziSally Kimmel turns abandoned guitars into stained-glass art.
Some musicians smash guitars to end a show.
Sally Kimmel shatters glass to give old guitars an encore.
Accompanied by a band of intricate saws, pliers and soldering irons, the suburban West Palm Beach stained-glass artist turns past-their-prime acoustic guitars into instruments that make music for the eyes.
Employing Jimi Hendrix-worthy fingerwork, she replaces the wood soundboards with intricate designs, then inserts glowing LEDs inside the sound chambers, creating vibrant guitar lamps.
“They make visual music,” she said. “It used to have life as a guitar, and now it has life as an art piece and it provides light. It gives it a second life.”
A stained-glass artist for 50 years, Kimmel has made at least 30 guitar lamps since creating her first one about 10 years ago.
Today, her vibrant acoustic lamps decorate homes from Wisconsin to Texas to Pennsylvania to Florida and a Washington, D.C., travel agency, all sold at music and arts festivals around Florida, on her website, through social media and by word of mouth.
Four are on display at two Palm Beach County music venues: Village Music and Cafe in Wellington and the Bamboo Room in Lake Worth Beach, where they’re also for sale.
Prices start at $500, and she said she has had no trouble selling them.
“She’s an amazing artist, and it’s a great value considering how much work she puts into them,” said Steve Willey, owner of Village Music & Cafe.
“They’re pretty unique and a good repurpose of old guitars,” he said.
Kimmel said she sold 10 at the Tampa Bay Blues Festival this year.
“It’s kind of a niche thing right now that’s happening. People are really into it,” she said.
But the guitars are not her main act. Far from it.
She cut her career — pun intended — creating vibrant windows, transoms, lamps, sun catchers, votives and ornaments for customers in the United States and Europe.
“I started at the age of 14 with a lead lamp stained-glass kit. Then I was off to the races,” said Kimmel, who said she was first inspired by the bohemian red glass at her grandmother’s home in Washington, D.C.
Before long, she discovered the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany and glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, started working as a glass builder, and mastered the copper foil method of stained-glass making.
She went rock ’n’ roll about 10 years ago when a close friend asked her to make a birthday gift for her musician boyfriend.
“She came up with this idea — ‘Can you make a stained glass guitar?’ — thinking the whole body and neck would be glass,” Kimmel said. The concept morphed into keeping the neck intact but replacing the soundboard with stained glass.
For that first glass guitar lamp, she strung Christmas lights inside the body with a plug-in cord. She soon refined the lighting element by using battery-powered LEDs.
She uses mainly scrap pieces of stained glass left over from other projects. And she upcycles old guitars through Facebook Marketplace and donations by local musicians.
“If an instrument has no life, no sound quality, people donate it. If there’s any kind of crack, they tend to cough them up. It’s often cheaper to buy a new one than have someone repair it,” she said.
Each guitar lamp she makes is different. Some are tributes, requested by customers, to such bands as the Grateful Dead and Twenty One Pilots.
One was commissioned by a woman whose son died a year ago. The guitar was his prized possession, carried on his back wherever he went. The body has a checkered background tribute to the Vans shoes he always wore.
She made a lamp for a New York family from a 1950s Silverstone, an heirloom that originally had been used by the family decades ago.
She just completed a Beatles-themed guitar, with a yellow submarine and nods to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” It’s headed for the Bamboo Room.
“She already sold the one I really liked,” said Willey of Village Music & Cafe. “She’s going to make another one for me.”
For Kimmel, morphing music with stained glass felt natural. Music was always a big part of her life, stoked as a 12-year-old when she saw Muddy Waters perform. She plays the flute. And she once booked bands as a side gig.
“I’d always be doing my artwork and following good music around,” she said.
“I let the artwork take me where it’s going to take me. That’s kind of what’s happening right now. I came up with this guitar lamp concept and I managed to make it work. It’s like kismet.”
