Emile Norman, a self-taught artist whose best-known work was the massive and intricate glass mosaic window he created more than 50 years ago for a Masonic temple in San Francisco, died Thursday of natural causes at a Monterey, Calif., hospice, his caregiver said. He was 91.
Born in 1918 in Southern California, Norman carved his first piece of art from a riverside rock when he was 11.
He ruined his father's chisels, but the results gained the elder Norman's respect.
Norman enrolled in art school, but dropped out after a teacher told him he was doing the assignment "the wrong way," according to his website.
He found inspiration in the natural surroundings of his youth; in Big Sur, where he had lived since 1946.
Norman is survived by three sisters, Marilyn Bogart, Mabel Malone and Edna Rhodes, of Southern California.
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