Kay O’Neil has reopened her stained glass studio after the Lakeview Fire
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One of the bigger and more intricate pieces that Kay has ever worked on, presenting the beautiful yellow aspen leaves of autumn.
NEDERLAND — “I kind of feel like I need to carry around a bucket of sand to keep my feet on the ground,” Kay O’Neil of O’Neil Rocky Mountain Art told The Mountain-Ear back in November 2025, as she stood in a blank white space that needed a lot of work. “I get all wound up and excited and I have to tell myself to calm down. To still use the energy, but not to fly off.”
The shop that she had been in for over six years had been more than a storefront to display and sell her masterful stained glass art. For O’Neil, it was her studio, her home away from home, filled to the brim with glass samples, personally organized notes, and years' worth of reference pictures.
“Just the other day it hit me. I did this big window for a guy, this huge five-foot-long dragon, and the only evidence I had were pictures. It was so gorgeous,” O’Neil said during a recent interview, remembering some of the things that she lost in the Lakeview Fire that destroyed the Caribou Village Shopping Center on October 9, 2025.
“And not only did I have 40 years of drawings in there, but they were alphabetized.”
The old space held a frenetic energy that drew people in further, past the shiny, beautiful art in the window that initially piqued their curiosity. Suddenly they weren’t just shoppers anymore, they were inspired to ask questions, to converse—something that O’Neil loves to engage in—and to become a part of the studio’s energy.
“I literally jumped into my shoes and ran out the back door,” O’Neil recalls the early morning of the fire, as she was at her shop in the shopping center when it started.
With tragedy overtaking her so quickly—without time to think, prepare, overthink, or panic—O’Neil just had to act and react instinctively in order to survive. She attributes this to a personality trait, a survival skill that she’s always held dear, which helped her to not only survive the fire, but overcome the aftermath.
“Why be focused on the loss? After seeing the wildfire that almost got to Ned that one year, I thought to myself, ‘What would I do if the wildfire came through and destroyed Ned?’ And I thought, ‘Well, I’d get some pencils and some paper and I’d start drawing again.’ What else are you going to do?”
Backed by her own assertiveness and tenacity of spirit, O’Neil picked herself up, dusted herself off, and let her confidence and resolve lead her forward. The push impressed the Universe, and so the Universe gave back in the form of the Nederland community, as residents and friends stepped up and provided lanterns in the darkness.
“Because Citywide went to UMB, I couldn’t get GoFundMe to recognize my new bank account, so I couldn’t get that money and I was freaking out!” This setback triggered a chain of events that started in despair, but ended in victory.
First, a friend with a vacant Airbnb space gave O’Neil a place to collect herself. Then, a friend offered to fix up her moose-beaten van free of charge, and he even received a discount on the parts order from a manufacturer who heard about the tragedy. Further still, a fellow artist in the glass field offered O’Neil a workspace down the hill in order to relight that creative spark within.
O’Neil treasures all the kindness that rained down upon her, but she still knew then that if she truly wanted to get O’Neil Rocky Mountain Art open again she was going to have to dig in her heels and not make too many compromises. It was because of this that she called Ron Mitchell immediately to meet with him over dinner and discuss moving into one of his available spaces.
With a charitable infusion of glass samples from a local retired glass worker and artist, discounted supplies and work from local contractors, and with Mitchell and his team helping her—and taking her precise instructions to heart—the space at 30 West Boulder Street started undergoing the changes necessary to meet O’Neil’s vision just over eight months ago.
“I mean, I remember standing in here and saying, ‘how is this ever going to happen, how is this going to come together?’ And then it did,” O’Neil said, giving credit to those who contributed their sweat to help her get going again. “They’re so smart and they’re so capable—they just figure shit out! It has really been a journey, and it’s only been since November.”
Every step of the way, Mitchell and his team listened to O’Neil and worked to meet her needs, from removing the carpeting and setting the new floors, to fixing her sink and properly setting up and displaying her signage, making her new shop visible from the highway so that the 2026 summer tourist season didn’t miss her entirely.
“Ron kept pushing me to get my signs up, and I didn’t have time to paint signs, so I just went ahead and got banners. So with those two up, and that 4x8 billboard over here, I’ve gotten more work since January, and a lot of the people who come in have no idea I had a store across the street for six years,” O’Neil noted.
O’Neil is thrilled with the foot traffic of new and returning customers that she’s been seeing at 30 West Boulder Street, as her unique position just off of the Peak to Peak Highway brings in the more curious, adventurous crowd, as opposed to the “lookie-loos” on East 1st Street, or the diminished numbers she used to see as one of the back corner units at the Caribou Village Shopping Center.
“We’ve been so busy, we can’t keep the windows filled.”
Eight months ago, O’Neil stood at one long work desk that she had in place. It was already clustered with drawings and layouts for new projects, or old projects that she was starting over again. The walls were blank, and there was a noticeable lack of color dangling in front of the windows, as she had no pieces to display yet.
Visiting O’Neil at her new shop, studio, and home away from home now, the windows are bursting with color, as the work of her and her team hangs proudly and shimmers brilliantly in the sunlight, and that familiar, frenetic yet comforting energy has returned.
Her rebirth has brought her back to capacity, and to a new level of busyness, as she was juggling three different major projects just during this interview.
A client had asked for a special commission, even picked the colors and glass himself, but the catch was that they wanted it delivered by Wednesday. It was Tuesday—O’Neil had her interview, had her own business sign to paint and finish up for the very front of the shop, and had one of the largest and most intricate stained glass pieces she’s ever worked on taking up her main work table.
Luckily, Emily and Mark Haynes—who O’Neil calls her “A-Team”—were there to lend a helping hand and work on frames and on production pieces to sell at the shop. With their help, and with O’Neil’s own unrelenting determination, O’Neil Rocky Mountain Art is back to taking commissions, teaching students, and providing beautiful art to shop for and to experience.
“This is what you call a mahl stick.” Even with the organized chaos all around her in the wider studio and shop space, as progress is being made on a variety of projects, O’Neil can’t help but engage with those customers caught looking over her shoulder to watch her in action. “And these are paint brushes for detailing on cars and signs,” she continued, explaining her process for painting her new bright and bold sign.
She recalls the story of her logo, which is the main focus of the sign. When she was jogging near the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis—also known as Shaw’s Garden—a sudden hard rain caused her eyes to hurt, as she had just put new contacts in. The pain caused her to have to choose her course of action and run full steam ahead. Once she returned home she found herself inspired to finish a painting of a running horse that she was working on.
“He’s got one ear facing forward, and the other ear is back like when they get angry —it’s like ‘get the hell out of the way, I’m coming through,’ so that has been my logo ever since.”
O’Neil had repeated these next words several times during her interview, as she described how the clean slate she was given didn’t remain clean for long, before becoming full with new projects in stasis, scraps of glass, and notes for the future. “Do not try to stop me. I will keep coming.”
