light made solid

Stained glass news out of Springfield, Mass.: Roger L. Putnam Vocational-Technical High School in Springfield has added to its curriculum a stained glass class. The class was made possible thanks to a large donation of stained glass, window patterns and other materials from local artisan Susan Stevens of Feeding Hills. Stained glass classes such as these offer students a great blend of technical and creative skills. Students get to use math and geometry in practical hands-on applications with beautiful artistic results.

Just found this interesting blog called Stained Glass and Food, featuring all kinds of different daily entries on stained glass and other subjects. Definitely worth checking out. This one is getting added to my blogroll - visible on the right side of the page. If anybody knows other good stained glass blogs, I'd love to put together a nice little directory of them. So if you know the URL's just leave them in the comments. Thanks!

I just came across an abstract for interesting paper available at the National Library of Medicine, via the National Institute of Health. The paper is called The art of stained glass: metaphor for the art of nursing and explores the metaphorical connections between the two disciplines. An excerpt from the summary will give you more info:

Stained glass artistry and caring in nursing require technical expertise, yet technical skill and knowledge are not the substance of either art. Both transcend space and time, and the art of stained glass and the art of nursing are influenced by the artist's/nurse's personal, social and cultural history. Just as the artisan transforms the glass and lead and is transformed in the creative moment, so does the caring transaction transform both patient and nurse.

Sounds like an interesting approach to melding together these disciplines.

Stained glass news out of Allentown, NJ: Karen Deets runs a store in Allentown called Off the Wall Craft gallery which is dedicated to making people smile.

"I like things that are fun and make me smile," Deets said. "I think that should be one function of art."

Deets store operates out an old and allegedly haunted mill where she sells her own stained glass artwork along with art and craft items from around America. The work they sell there seems to have a strong emotional or perhaps spiritual resonance with their customers:

Saleswoman Rosemary Keller said she once saw a customer hold art glass close to her body to get a feel for whether it was the right gift for a particular friend. It seemed strange at first, but Keller herself noticed, "when you clean the glass, you get energy back from the glass."

"It does help in your mood," said Clara Nurko, a store manager who has worked there 18 years.

To find out more about Off the Wall Gallery or contact them about their products, visit their website, available here.

Here's an item from a military journal about a memorial stained glass window for the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. The window was commissioned by the Chaplain Corps to be installed in a small chapel on-site at the Pentagon, near where it was damaged in the attacks.

The article explains:

Dennis E. Roberts, artist and owner of IHS Studios in Fredricksburg TX, donated the piece. He said he was honored and privileged to be able to help create something to remember the victims of the attacks, especially considering his own military service.

Roberts spent more than 50 hours designing and more than three weeks cutting some 500 pieces of glass to fit into the frame. There are 184 red pieces representing the 184 men and women who were killed at the Pentagon.

With all the devastation from Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region, many area churches were especially hard hit. I saw one news program about a New Orleans church which was completely destroyed. Several devoted parishioners sifted through the rubble, collecting shards of stained glass in the hope of rebuilding their beloved church.

I just spotted a brief article from Alabama describing the loss of a stained glass window at First United Methodist Church in Arab. Click here for more info.

Stained glass news from the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey: Sharon Hill of Tinton Falls is trying to turn her stained glass hobby into a full-time business venture. Hill worked part time for several years as an artisan at a shop called Creator's Will until it closed down. Since then, Hill has taken her skills and gone out on her own to create a business called Bohemian Panes. Hill sells one-of-a-kind stained-glass panels and a wide assortment of stained-glass windcatchers and jewelry. Hill is struggling to make her business work, and has entered into a partnership with a retail consortium, Beyond Retail Group, to help boost her business. She's also in the very early stages of negotiating with QVC to possibly have her stained glass work sold on television.

Stained glass news out of Harrodsburg, Kentucky:

Pearl Sexton began working in stained glass like many people, as a hobby. She started out making small panels, things like angels and suncatchers using the copper-foil method. Eventually a neighbor taught her how to do leaded glass techniques, and Sexton's work blossomed from there.

Today, one of Sexton's pieces stands proudly in the Carpenter's Christian Church of Harrodsburg. The work is a tremendous 8 foot by 5 foot leaded cross with over six hundred individual pieces of glass. The cross is even lit from within, thanks to the electrical help of a friend of Sexton's. The glass cross is the centerpiece of a new sanctuary building recently built on church property.