Stained Glass Journal Archive

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

International Resources

A great European resource for painted stained glass is The British Society of Master Glass Painters. They have a world wide membership but focus more on British painters. There site has some good links for images of windows and info about stained glass painting in general. In France, near the cathedral at Chartre is the Centre International du Vitrail. They have classes and a library on site as well as a gallery. Having been there, it has the look of an art society in the US. In New York there is the New York Carver, which is connected to the stone carvers at Saint John the Divine. This site and the church is a great resource for details about life in the Middle Ages. If you go to New York, you must stop by the Cloisters as well. It is the largest museum of objects from the Middle Ages in New York and is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Also, here is a essay written by Dick Millard about the process of designing a window for a church client.
In it he writes,

"The first step in my process of creating a design is best described with a phrase I coined years ago: Design Catalysts. By my definition, a design catalyst is any element which is capable of providing and defining parameters within which one commences design. Such catalysts can range from a subject (religious or otherwise) to a color field, an emotion, an aerial view and indeed all the way to the client's budget. In essence any idea from any source can be a design catalyst."

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Architecture and Representation

A few years ago, I organized a class at Grace Episcopal Church with the goal of designing a pilgrimage window dedicated to a parishioner who had passed away. The class members set up a recipe of things in the window. Some of these were: two favorite Irish pilgrimage sites, Pennsylvania wild flowers, a large oak tree, a stone path, shoes, and a person walking down the path. Then, I drew out a design for them using these elements. In the next class setting they commented on the design. We went through five rounds until the sketch was accepted by all. My initial idea was to abstractly outline the figure and draw a map inside it as if you cut out a map in the shape of a person. My first sketch used this idea because I didn't want the person to look like anyone in particular but more as a stand-in for the viewer. No one in the group like that as the solution but understood the intention. So for the next bunch of sketches, I changed the figure again and again. Doing that opened a debate in the group. One group of people wanted to associate with the person as a stand in for themselves. The other group, who finally won, didn't want anyone to be there but wanted it to be open and ready for them to step on to the path. I created a sketch by the final class that everyone approved of. The final window was painted and built.

This distinction is important in developing imagery for sacred space committees. Some individuals in religious groups want there to be a representation of themselves in the art. Other groups prefer no representation, but want imagery of patterns or environments.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Stained Glass For Sale

Check out some stained glass panels that I have for sale on eBay. They are all hand painted on European mouth blown cathedral glass in an awesome solid wood, black stained frame. One is a Victorian vine, one uses a Victorian shell motif, one uses a fleur di lis motif, and the other is an abstract window with two swans.

I Hate Stained Glass

When I started in the stained glass industry, I was fresh out of college and was giving stained glass a second look. All that I could think about when I saw stained glass up to that point was about how stuffy and old fashioned it looked. The imagery was sleepy. Up until that point, all I could think about was being this kid sitting in a church board and not able to stay as still as I was supposed to be. Did I really notice the stained glass as it's own separate thing as kid? It's really hard to say. There are no memories of windows that impressed me or played an important role, really. It wasn't until after getting my BFA in drawing and painting that I noticed the windows that much. For me, they were like some girl that I knew was there as a kid and was kind of annoyed with enough to not really talk to or care that much about. But then one day after she was grown up (and I was grown up), looking up at her and thinking, wait a minute.

Old windows are insight into how people thought and how they live. Years go by. Generations of people are born and die in front of these things. Their stylized imagery which seems so quirky tells something about how people used to think about their bodies, environments, and soul. I imagine these long Gothic bodies as depicting the moment when the soul is pushing it's way out of the body skyward. I imagine forests that were cut down and buildings that are no longer there.

We live in a time when so much importance is given to the written word of scripture. Locked away in all these old fashioned windows though is something else. It is something that doesn't go noticed so directly. It is something that becomes the space in which the text is read. Just like a Biblical scholar, we can ask is this window true? Was it handed down directly from God? If we answer that it they are true, then heaven has been created on earth, right? If we say no, then it is all a look into something else.

As a restless kid, the space of churches were unlike any environment in my life and somehow I tried to make myself comfortable. Now, I realize how important it was and is for me to hate stained glass. It pushes me into a career of making churches comfortable. As a stained glass artist, I create the windows so they are true and real to me. I don't have to worry about if it is from God or true for everyone. Instead I focus on, do they work for these people? If the truth be told, stained glass windows still drive me crazy, but I figure them out and make them work.