Nadya Penoff saw life as a great adventure, filled with opportunities to find a way to accomplish any goal. She believed dreams could come true, as hers so often did.
As a single mom, she decided it was time for us to have a home of our own when I was just seven. But not just any home. My optimistic mother scouted for the right plot of land in the beautiful mountain community of Painted Cave perched above Santa Barbara, many miles from the town where she grew up. We were going to build it ourselves. It would be fun, she assured me.
She had no experience other than the strong belief that she could figure out how to assemble a livable dwelling out of a pile of building materials, heed the advice of friends in construction, and read a set of plans. She found a building class at her alma mater UCSB, “How to Build Your Own House,” and was savvy enough to submit a proposal that was eventually accepted as the model project.
We managed to build a compact, aesthetically pleasing, two-story home that she owned free and clear by the time we moved in. Strewn with boulders, shaded by pines, with a view all the way to the ocean by day, of the entire universe by night; it was an idyllic location for us to live in nature, to contemplate possibilities far beyond.
Nadya made her living as a stained-glass artist with an extraordinary ability to combine color, light, and air, the rigidity of lead, the fragility of glass. She taught Adult Education classes, created beautiful pieces for the rich and famous, and accepted commissions for sanctuaries and sacred spaces. She designed and handcrafted 40 striking windows for St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church. That two-year-project was the first of some 30 installations she created for churches from Kauai to Kenya, Philadelphia to Atlanta, collaborating with architects, contractors, priests, and big church donors — typically all men — while retaining her feminine perspective.
Stained glass was unlikely work for a woman, but she held her own with the men in charge. It was soul work for her, as she explained, “I want the windows to help put someone in the frame of mind to have a feeling of awe, to experience a richness and an exquisiteness that allows them to be more receptive to a spiritual connection so that their sensibility is changed when they enter the sacred space. That’s what I care about.” (She speaks more of her art in a video here: https://tinyurl.com/NadyaPenoff.)
Local examples of Nadya’s public art include a painting selected by Cottage Hospital, the marine-themed stained-glass window at the Maritime Museum’s coffee bar, the Alpha-Omega window at Transition House, and the bright “Celebration of Reading” triptych in the children’s section at the tiny Vandenberg Village library.
I started my own career in stained glass with my mother at the age of 20, and seven years later, we worked together on a historic restoration for the Centennial of the Lihue United Church on Kauai. We ended up spending the summers of 1997 and 1998 working on these 100-year-old windows that had been through three hurricanes and planted our roots in Kauai where we both eventually lived.
It was in the great outdoors where my mother found her purpose and engaged her hands and heart, soul and spirit in creating her favorite form of artistic self-expression, the plein-air paintings where she depicted her vision and appreciation of Santa Barbara’s open spaces.
From Figueroa Mountain in the springtime to the windswept shores of Jalama Beach, she delighted in every aspect of the ritual, from packing up her supplies to checking the weather to selecting the proper frame to arranging for an exhibition.
The daughter of immigrants from Bulgaria, Nadya inherited their wanderlust. She liked to say she put her money into world travel instead of the bank. And she had a flair for the authentic and the exotic: riding horses in Mongolia, digging water wells in Tanzania, preparing meals for a river-rafting concession in the Grand Canyon. A longtime member of the Santa Barbara Ski Club, she was equally enthusiastic about skiing legendary slopes in Mammoth — where she became a ski instructor in her fifties — Banff, Biarritz, and the Dolomites. As a result of her travels and adventures, she maintained friendships across the country and around the world.
But it was home in Santa Barbara where my mother flourished, in her sweet place in Painted Cave where she hosted legendary gatherings with friends and families; she encouraged children who visited to swing on the hammock, scramble on the boulders, take a short hike to admire the view, and enjoy the quiet open space away from the city streets.
She was an accomplished cook, always happy to share recipes, to have deep and meaningful conversations, to tell hard truths. She was known to stop by unannounced at a friend’s house, always bearing a thoughtful gift. She had great faith in people showing up, and fiercely believed in her motto, “There’s always a way.”
A doting grandmother, my mom considered my daughter, Jazmine, “the greatest gift she ever received.” Funny, those who knew and loved Nadya felt the same way about her.
She is greatly missed, and survived by her brother John Penoff of Vallejo, as well as myself, daughter-in-law Maroesjka, and granddaughter Jazmine, all of Kauai, Hawai’i.
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