Epoxy vs. Glass: The New Stained Glass of the Future

People often compare Martin Eichinger’s new resin panels to stained glass, and he understands why. They catch light in striking ways, and the colors seem to float inside the material. But the resemblance ends the moment you understand how the work is made.

“Glass does one thing,” Eichinger says. “Epoxy does something completely different.”

Traditional stained glass has a fixed nature. Once shaped and cooled, it stays exactly as it is. Epoxy resin begins that way—clear and fluid—but then shifts for hours. Inside that window, mica powders move, settle, and slowly build their own internal patterns.

“It is changing the whole time,” he explains. “You walk away and come back later, and it has taken on a new direction.”

Glass never does that. Epoxy behaves almost like a slow chemical weather system.

Eichinger pours the resin onto clear acrylic panels, working on the front and back. Instead of a single plane of color, the piece becomes a stack of thin reactions, each one visible through the next. Light doesn’t just pass through; it travels through different layers of activity.

“You get a different view depending on where you stand,” he says. “That part is important to me.”

Stained glass uses transparency. Epoxy uses depth.

Epoxy and Stained Glass: Fireball hangs over the front door to Art at The Geode.

Resin also lets Eichinger use ingredients that glassmaking could never handle: mica flakes, dyes, crushed crystals, even fine strands of fiberglass. Each reacts differently as the epoxy firms up. Some cluster. Some streak. Some remain suspended, almost weightless.

“It is tough material,” he says. “You can put things into it that would never survive in glass.”

Rather than heat, the work relies on timing and observation. The piece develops as the chemistry settles.

What makes these panels feel like stained glass of the future is not imitation, but evolution. They still rely on light, but the interaction is more active. A single piece can look sharp and luminous in one moment and soft and smoky in the next. Light pulls different structures forward depending on the angle, the hour, even the weather outside.

The artwork is not only transparent. It’s responsive.

Eichinger isn’t trying to make a modern version of a cathedral window. He’s pursuing something adjacent: a medium that keeps the spirit of stained glass while allowing for movement and experimentation that glass can’t match.

“It belongs in that conversation,” he says, “but it’s its own thing.”

Epoxy doesn’t replace stained glass. It opens another door beside it—a new way to work with light, color, and layered transparency.

And as Eichinger keeps testing materials and pushing the chemistry further, the medium keeps hinting at possibilities that glass simply never offered. A future where light-based art isn’t frozen, but quietly in motion.