Jim Nutting lets me hold his tarantula. I’m not here to hold an arachnid, though; I’m here to talk to him about his stained-glass artworks. I knew, before I drove up to Lisbon Falls to meet Nutting, that he has a “bug museum” located in the same building as his studio, and I knew his business is housed in an old brick church, but I didn’t yet grasp the magnitude of what Nutting has done with Maine Art Glass. He’s taken what was once a small, Lewiston-based company and turned it into a sprawling, multistory gallery, workshop, library, and museum. Not everything is for sale, but everything—from the bugs to the vintage books to the skulls—is certainly worth seeing. 

The eclecticism of Maine Art Glass can be explained, in part, by Nutting’s personal history. He grew up in central Maine and attended Bates College, where he studied biology. “My entire life, I’ve collected anything that has to do with natural history,” he says. “I’ve always been a collector. I’ve been collecting butterflies longer than I’ve been working with glass.” Stained glass entered his life as a hobby. He took his first class in the late 1970s at a little shop in Lewiston and continued practicing in his spare time. He worked in the medical field until 1997, when he decided to leave and join up with an ex-teacher and close friend. “Nel Bernard founded Maine Art Glass in the ’70s, and he’d been in a few different locations,” Nutting says. “But I had big eyes, and we started growing very fast when I got involved.” It was Nutting’s idea to purchase the old Catholic church in Lisbon Falls: “We went from 1,200 square feet to 12,000.” 

Yet, somehow, every square foot is packed, even the basement. Perhaps especially the basement. That’s where Nutting keeps his unusual pets, does his restoration work, and teaches his weekly classes. “I don’t like to call anyone my employee,” he explains early in my visit, before introducing me to Deb Hines, his “associate.” Like many of the people who clean the studio and work the cash register, Hines started as Nutting’s student. “I took three sessions of the class, and then I asked him one day, ‘Can I just sit over here really quietly, not bother you, and work on my stuff?’” Hines recalls. Nutting offered her a job, first as a volunteer (in exchange for studio time) and later in the retail shop. “He’s a nice person,” she says. “You want to help him.” 

It’s also easy to get addicted to glass, thanks to its chromatic range and reflective qualities. While Nutting also teaches fusing and slumping, most people come to him with stained glass projects in mind. At the beginning of every new course (which runs between five and eight weeks), Nutting asks his students what they want to make. “He’ll help them make it, no matter how crazy it is,” says Hines. Half an hour later, I get to see an example of student work, when one current acolyte comes in with a red, orange, green, and yellow Rubik’s Cube–inspired lamp. She is here to show off her newly completed project—local students often pop in like that. “But we have people who drive from Bar Harbor, New Hampshire, all over,” says Nutting, “to come to class. There aren’t many places that teach this anymore.” And, he adds, there aren’t many stores that have this breadth of materials. “I’m a vulture: whenever I hear some place goes under, I go and buy all the glass they have,” he says. “To me, it’s pretty collectible. I probably have more glass than anyone in the state.” 

Now, when he says glass, he isn’t really talking about the stuff that makes up your cellphone screen (Gorilla Glass) or the material that composes your car’s windshield (laminated glass). This is art glass. It comes in a variety of different textures, from rippled to etched to smooth. You can get opalescent glass streaked with white and finished with a flash of iridescence, or mirrored glass, which features a silvery coating on its back. The various colors come from different ingredients in the recipe: sulfur can create yellow or brown glass, cobalt makes glass blue, and manganese can turn clear glass into a rich violet. The price of glass, like anything else, changes with the times. “Glass is now triple what it once was,” says Nutting. “And they don’t make some of the colors you used to see.” Hines chimes in, “Like those deep plum purples. They were gorgeous. You don’t see that anymore.” 

It’s clear from spending time with Nutting (and his bugs) that he’s very sensitive to color. He loves pointing out the shocking blues of a butterfly’s wing or the brilliant emerald of a beetle’s hard shell. He’s also endlessly fascinated by seashells, animal skulls, and all other natural forms. Maine Art Glass is a store and a studio, but it’s also one huge curio cabinet. Soon he hopes to have his shell collection on display, but for now visitors must make do with his beachcomber-themed windows. These kaleidoscopic pieces are reminiscent of traditional rose windows, yet they’re studded with chalky scallop shells and the occasional bisected nautilus. 

Nutting admits that he doesn’t make as many straightforward stained-glass windows as he once did. He doesn’t have the time. “When I get a commission for something I like, I’ll make another one for myself,” he says, “like the fruit fly.” At this point, Nutting has made five fruit fly windows, the first of which was commissioned by the University of New England to hang in their genetics lab. “I’ve had a few geneticists come in and buy them out of the gallery,” he says. “Then I did a bed bug, and an exterminator bought that.” (He has another bed bug hanging high up in an arched window of the church.) “My specialty now is making these boxes,” he says, picking up a clear glass case with a colored base. Inside, he has arranged several massive insects on a piece of wood. “Murder hornets,” he says. “Remember those? Aren’t they something?” And they are, though I must admit, I prefer the butterflies.