Joan Myerson Shrager, a professional artist born and raised in Philadelphia, co-founded The Stained Glass Project: Windows that Open Doors based out of Roxborough’s Kendrick Recreation Center. 

Joan Myerson Shrager, a professional artist born and raised in Philadelphia, is the co-founder of The Stained Glass Project: Windows that Open Doors based out of Roxborough’s Kendrick Recreation Center. Joan’s interest in art arrived at an early age and was in part inspired by her high school teacher’s encouragement to pursue a passion for drawing and painting. In the early 90’s as the owner and director of a cooperative art gallery, ArtForms, located in Manayunk, her passion translated into digital form aided by the advent of early built-in computer art applications. Shrager recalls the joy she found in the power of technology to recreate and dramatically change old paintings through scanning and digital drawing.

Shrager’s personal passion for art, though, has since found a broader reach when she and long-time friend Paula Mendel were presented with an opportunity to run an afterschool art program in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Mendel, a formally trained glass artist, and Shrager combined their passions and focused on developing a program to teach local high school students the craft of stained glass making. These classes and training formed The Stained Glass Project: Windows that Open Doors (SGP).

In 2013, following the closure of Germantown High School, SGP was in search of a new home and soon found one at Roxborough’s Kendrick Recreation Center. Today and over 12 years since its founding, SGP is open to all students from Philadelphia-based high schools including our local Roxborough High School.

“This is more than an art class, for many students, this afterschool program is a hideaway from troubles and the judgmental atmosphere of high school," said Shrager.

Today, the SGP has resulted in close to 110 stained glass mosaics with installations not only in the Kendrick Recreation Center but as far reaching as a South African center for AIDs orphans, a school in New Orleans rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina and an Ojibwa native reservation in Minnesota. This year, they created stained glass windows for an impoverished school in Uganda. To learn more about SGP visit https://www.facebook.com/TheStainedGlassProject.

This profile is part of the series Roxborough Profiles developed by Roxborough Development Corporation to honor the extraordinary people that impact our small town and who are active in a common mission to improve the lives of the people in our community and the larger city. If you are interested in nominating someone to be featured as part of this series email us at marketing@roxboroughpa.com.