In 1992 I had the idea to organise a show about glass art in my hometown Baden near Vienna.. Helga Reay-Young introduced me to the extraordinary members of the Women’s International Glass Workshop. I knew Helga from our studies at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, Germany, in the years between 1987-1989. In 1993 I was lucky to organise the Women’s 3rd International Stained Glass Workshop with a lot of help from Helga Reay-Young, one of the founders of the group.

The week with all the women was a very tense and exciting time for me, I was the new one in the group and also new to organising art events. But everything went well. Everybody brought her piece/pieces of art with herself in the airplane, train or car. We installed the show together and opened it in the first two days of the week that we stayed together.

The accommodation of the participants were in two nice pensions around the corner from where I live.

My itinerary for the week included  visiting  two churches with stained glass in Vienna (one with art nouveau windows, the other with windows by Austrian artist, Arnulf Rainer, made in the 1960s), museums, two very old monasteries in the Viennese Woods, Heiligenkreuz -  with grisaille windows and Klosterneuburg (14th century windows) and there was also time for individual excursions to Vienna.

Plus we had time together to show and discuss our individual works as well as a slide-show in the public exhibition.

After a week we said goodbye and knew that we would meet two years later in Japan for the next workshop. Some of the women could not stay the whole week due to work and family commitments, this included, Chris Bird-Jones and Catrin Jones from Wales.

The exhibition was open for a week longer – this was a change to the former 2 workshops where everybody took her piece of work back when she was leaving. There was one exception, Linda Lichtman took her piece back with her when she left at the end of the week.

For me the workshop was a great experience and proved to be very influential in my life.
- Cornelia Konig