In his North Shore studio, artist Jim Erickson is dismantling the past, and preserving the future.

"It is tedious, meticulous and very difficult. You got to do a lot of manipulation to make it work," said Erickson. "The joy comes from holding it up and saying, 'oh my god look how beautiful that is."

"If I've done my job well no one will know I ever touched it," he said.

Stained glass was not his first passion. In art school, Erickson wanted to be a painter, but it was a friend's window project that showed him the light.

"It just really caught my eye that day. With a painting, the light is bouncing off the color, where in stained glass, it's coming through the color," he explained.

"It requires actual gold in the glass to make the pink color," he said, showing reporter Lara Yamada a pink translucent flower on a glass window.

"I bought real cello strings and I drilled holes down here," he said showing artwork with a motorcycle and a cello combined.

"And this is a composition I did for Skywalker Ranch," he said pulling out a picture of a colorful composition.

Forty years later his portfolio is as colorful as it is diverse.

"There are faces, hands, and robes that are just miraculous," said Erickson, showing Yamada around the St. Andrew's Cathedral on Beretainia Street in Honolulu.