But even after 50 years - beginning with beakers and basic paperweights, progressing through treatments of Dante-esque themes encased in cubes, and most recently encompassing perfect globes of enigmatically assembled motifs (golden orbs, honeybees, flowering systems) - there most certainly is a lot left.
Stankard is a bearded, Birkenstock-and-socks-clad, dyslexic, Walt Whitman-quoting devotee of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ("The soliloquy on quality is so beautiful," he says, with double-rainbow, whoa reverence). He oozes enthusiasm for his works of art - for their meaning that is equal parts literal and mystical, physical and intellectual, pretty and seething. He fills a space, but also empties space. Physical matter becomes invisible; clear glass settles onto colored glass and gives it life.
"I'm trying to bring this depth of feeling to the glass, to make it come alive," he says. "The work slowly became about organic intelligence. Then I started to include human forms that are ambiguous. Then I incorporated masks. Insects pollinating like a life cycle."
And all at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit! Whoosh! "It's been a journey that has taught me so much about nature," he says. "I educate myself."
Stankard, who says he was dismissed as "a dummy" as a dyslexic high school student, now embraces the classics of literature with books on tape. The father of five and grandfather of six recently built a new studio on his property in Mantua, and his flat-roofed, many-windowed, rectangular house is getting a new bathroom.
Stankard is the unassuming dean of a long tradition of South Jersey glassmaking, which birthed an industry based on natural resources - sand, marshland for drying, coastal proximity. He left industry in the 1970s, last working for chemical manufacturer Rohm & Haas in Philadelphia.
