Collegiate Times

She refers to each of her pieces as children, and Norton tells the story behind each of her pieces while flipping through a clip book of her work. One Christmas, a client of Norton's asked her to make two pieces: a man riding a bicycle and a purple elephant. She modeled one piece after a potter she met while traveling through France.

She modeled one of her pieces, "Danielle," after a potter she encountered while traveling through France.

"The constant tension is between do you make stuff that you know will sell, or do you make stuff that's interesting to you?" Norton said. "And I err on the side of things that are interesting. And if someone likes them, that's fine."

Although her list of creations includes a business card holder and stained glass windows, her glasswork has recently expanded to vases.

Dale Norton, Nancy's husband, discovered his love for woodturning the same weekend that his wife took her stained glass class, and he is supportive of his wife's craft. He helped her outfit her basement studio in their Blacksburg home.

"She goes outside the box visually. I like most of the pieces she does with shells and agates, slices of stone," Dale said. "She's tried bigger and more ambitious pieces, especially for commissions. It's always changing. She continues to come up with new things to try instead of settling on a product and cranking them out."

He said he admires her originality and the fact that she has the courage to experiment with different forms.

Norton also found the courage to take up a new hobby later in life. She worked as a librarian before taking her first stained glass class in her 50s. She said that even though she found one of her passions late in life, discovering it was transformative.

"I thought, oh well, the creativity fairy passed me by," Norton said. "And when I found this, it was like, oh, there's a language out there that I didn't even know I could speak. It was really life changing for me."

She said she has hope that everyone can find their own "inner artist." Even if it's not until later in life.

"I really think that everybody has one or many ways to express their creativity," Norton said. "They really ought to play around until they find the one they enjoy and the one that fits them."

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