A second career, again
Dr. Jeff Duckham — known to friends and clients as "Dewey" — spent 42 years in practice as a family physician. But his hands were shaping glass long before that career began. He picked up his first tools in the 1970s, during medical school, cutting and leading glass late at night between anatomy labs and clinical rotations.
Now, with medicine behind him, Dewey has returned to stained glass as his second career — again — working out of a studio in Carmel, California, and filling his family's homes with the same hand-cut, hand-painted panels he began making fifty years ago.
"During the past four years the growth of my stained glass has closely paralleled my medical education. Initially, dissecting away at that ol' cadaver was followed in the eve by chipping away at glass… I am now both a broke medical student and a full-fledged member of the starving-artist-set. Thus, it is with this unique set of credentials that I plan to break into a new medical specialty: Stained Glass Medicine, the bread and butter of which will be the suturing of glass lacerated fingers and monitoring lead levels." — Dewey Duckham, "Stained Images," April 1979, University of Cincinnati
Begins working with stained glass during medical school.
First exhibition, "Stained Images," Health Sciences Library, University of Cincinnati.
In practice as a family physician, glasswork continuing alongside all along.
A second career, again — full-time studio practice in Carmel, California.
