Glass of LIfe - Accountant Who Solders
The Accountant Who Solders: Glass of Life on Round Lake
Jodi Chemes spent twenty years preparing taxes. Then a coupon for a stained glass class rewired her life — and gave St. Petersburg, city of glass museums, the one thing it was missing: a place where anyone can learn to make it.
For a city that markets itself as the Glass Coast, St. Petersburg spent years with a strange hole in the middle of the map. It had the Chihuly Collection, the Imagine Museum, hot shops where masters blow molten glass before crowds — but nowhere for an ordinary person to sit down, cut a piece of cobalt sheet glass, and learn the ancient craft of leading light into pictures. The last stained glass shop in town, Grand Central Stained Glass & Graphics, had closed; the nearest classes were in Clearwater or Tampa.
Then, in January 2024, a storefront across from Round Lake Park in Historic Uptown quietly filled the gap. Glass of Life, at 499 7th Avenue North, is a stained glass studio, school, and gallery run by Jodi Chemes — an artist with what may be the least bohemian origin story in the entire St. Petersburg art scene. She is, by trade, a certified public accountant.
From Tax Season to Soldering Iron
Chemes had been preparing taxes for two decades when, around 2014, she came across a coupon for a stained glass class in Tampa and went on a whim. The appeal, she has said repeatedly since, was almost the opposite of what draws people to painting: stained glass never confronts you with a blank canvas. There is always a pattern, a process, a sequence — score, break, grind, foil, solder — and the craft's technical structure makes it welcoming to precisely the people who insist they aren't creative. As she put it to the St. Pete Catalyst before opening, "It's easy for individuals that don't consider themselves artsy or creative." An accountant's art form, in the best sense: rigorous, methodical, and radiant at the end.
The hobby compounded. Chemes began selling her work — whimsical nature pieces and her beloved pet portraits, priced from $50 into the four figures — with a twist that defines her practice to this day: the profits go to animal rescue. Her longstanding pledge routes proceeds from her stained glass projects to local groups including Friends of Strays and Pet Pal Animal Shelter, making her art career, functionally, a fundraising operation with a soldering iron. She worked first from a commercial building she owns on 8th Avenue South, showed at art markets (where transporting fragile glass panels taught her the value of a permanent address), and logged time in the city's creative community — as a member of the women's collective Venus and running the community space All the Things St. Pete in the Warehouse Arts District.
The storefront found her by accident. Walking from a December cosplay event at the Coliseum to get coffee at Flatbread & Butter, she spotted a for-rent sign on a 1,150-square-foot space overlooking Round Lake. Weeks later, Glass of Life had its soft opening; its first beginner class ran January 20, 2024.
The Studio That Teaches
What Chemes built is best understood as three businesses sharing one sunlit room. The first is the school. The signature Intro Stained Glass class — $150 for two two-hour sessions, all tools and materials included — walks beginners from choosing a design and glass colors through the full craft sequence to a finished piece they carry home. Around it has grown a full curriculum: two-hour one-off workshops built for date nights and creative nights out; intermediate classes for alumni tackling complex patterns; seasonal Halloween and Christmas ornament workshops; and the studio's cheekiest invention, Sip & Solder, which pairs a stained glass workshop with a wine flight from the in-studio wine shop. Private events — birthdays, bachelorettes, team outings, with wine, grazing boards, or brunch available — round out the calendar. Reviewers, including an Axios reporter who took the beginner course, describe the experience as absorbing, therapeutic, and surprisingly achievable.
The second business is the open studio. Because stained glass demands an expensive kit of tools most hobbyists can't justify owning, Glass of Life rents bench time — hourly or monthly — with full equipment access for class alumni and working glass artists. Chemes extends the welcome further than glass: any local creative who wants an inspiring workspace can rent a spot to paint, write, or draw for $20 an hour, a policy that makes the studio one of the cheapest artist workspaces in the urban core.
The third is the gallery. The walls sell work by Chemes and a rotating cast of local artists — recent displays have included Alex McCaffrey, studio instructors Veronica Dunn and Addie Padgett, the steampunk curiosities of Xzanthia, and the comic-and-superhero-inspired glass of Chemes's partner — plus custom commissions, from house numbers to the pet portraits that remain her favorite subject.
Fragility, Assembled Into Strength
Media affection for the studio has been steady — from launch coverage in St. Pete Rising and the Catalyst to a lyrical Artisan Magazine feature and a FOX 13 segment in which Chemes distilled her philosophy: "For me, the therapy of stained-glass started with not having a blank canvas." The Artisan piece landed on the image that best explains the place — lessons fixed in color and lead, fragility assembled into strength.
For the city's art map, Glass of Life completes a circuit. The Glass Coast now runs from spectacle (Chihuly), to collection (Imagine), to production (the hot shops and Duncan McClellan's campus), to — at a workbench overlooking Round Lake — participation. It is the only rung on that ladder an absolute beginner can climb the same afternoon they discover it exists. That it's run by a tax accountant who gives the profits to shelter animals is, somehow, the most St. Petersburg detail of all.
Visit: Glass of Life, 499 7th Ave. N. (at Round Lake, Historic Uptown), St. Petersburg. Classes, workshops, open studio time, and private events bookable online; gallery open during studio hours (check current schedule online). Free street parking on 7th Ave. N. and nearby streets. Information: GlassOfLife.org.
Sources: St. Pete Rising; St. Pete Catalyst; Axios Tampa Bay; I Love the Burg; The Artisan Magazine; FOX 13 Tampa Bay; Glass of Life studio materials.
