Stained Glass Workshop
Five years ago, I was working as a designer and painter for Pittsburgh Stained Glass. I was creating designs for churches that I knew very little about. Sure, I knew plenty about the types of symbols that each congregation wanted in a window. They communicated this from afar very well. And after working with many different types of churches, I starting to see different larger patterns that groups of churches use. The priests, ministers, and building committees were very helpful in how the windows should technically look. Beyond al this though, I wondered more about the people who would sit beside these windows every day. As a designer for a major stained glass studio, I realized that I had no contact with these people and I understood very little about them.
So in 1999 I decided to get to know a church from the inside as an artist. I advertised a stained glass workshop in which I would teach members of the church to build windows and talk about the history of glass and imagery. After following up with one synagogue and a few churches, Grace Episcopal Church in Mount Washington ran with the idea. I began by teaching a class inwhich the adult students designed and built a window of their own to take home. This class enabled me to get to know the members of the church and the pastor very well.
When the class was over, I was invited to create a new window for the church. For this window, I drew from the congregation itself within the context of their symbolism. Over the next three years, we completed three other windows as well. Each time, I taught the members of the church how to paint and build the windows themselves. A group of 12 developed as a design and construction team over time. Unfortunately, during the making of the third window, one of the members of the team contracted brain cancer and passed away. For the very last window, we designed it as a combination of different aspects of her life and faith. It was truly moving. It was installed on the first anniversary of her death.
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