Vitreosity

Grandma Prisbrey Video

Heard a story on NPR this morning about a web based video service called Folkstreams.net. They describe themselves as a "National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Culture". The site features video streams of full length documentary films, mostly about folk artists and musicians. I went there and first thing came upon a documentary from 1982 called Grandma's Bottle Village: The Art of Tressa Prisbrey.

It's a 28 minute film interviewing Tressa Prisbrey and doing a tour of Bottle Village in it's prime. Well worth seeing for the bottle wall enthusiast.

John Hayward (1929-2007)

Heard on the forums that English stained glass artist John Hayward passed away this past week. I have to admit that I'd heard of him in name only and didn't know his work. So I searched and I came across these nice images of one of his windows and thought that it would be nice to pass it along. Curiously though, I also came across this short lived John Hayward blog as well.

I found the images in a Flickr set called Church Art by AndrewTaylor1 who is a painter and also does stained glass work.

The subject is St. Michael vanquishing Lucifer. The window is located at St.Peter & St.Paul’s, which is the Parish Church of Somborne with Ashley situated at the heart of the village of King’s Somborne in Hampshire, England.

Having a highly colored stylized scene within a clear glass grid was a signature design approach by Hayward. Nice use of the yellow silverstain to provide a soft, but bright and glowing edge around the whole scene.

Church of England Stained Glass Artists

This link was making the rounds recently on the usual SG forums - ChurchArt, from the Church of England

One page specifically features Contemporary English Stained Glass artists. It's unusual and interesting to see a grouping like this as it gives a rare snapshot of contemporary stained glass design, even though I know it's far from a complete list, even of British Stained Glass artists. There is certainly no web equivalent for U.S. SG artists.

Sad to report that there are quite a lot of dull designs being put forth these days. Of all the artists represented here, I still like the work of Frans Wesselman the most. I think what I like most is the directness, the simple representational imagery, and the gentle quiet expression. Nice and unusual work.

TIME warp

It's unusual to see a print magazine fully archive their articles on the web and doubly unusual to see a print magazine archive pre-web articles on the web. That's why it's so strange to see this article on the web about stained glass, called Stained Glass, Back and Blooming, originally published by TIME magazine in March of 1978!

The funny thing is that I very well remember this article when it first came out. It was quite something at the time that a 'major news weekly magazine' was recognizing stained glass. I remember the photo shown with the article (not shown on the website) of a Ray King window - abstract, sort of Schaffrath-lite. This came on the heels of the relative success of the book "New Glass", and a number of the artists in that book are in the TIME article. I was a teenage stained glass hobbyist less than 2 years away from my first professional job in stained glass and it was nice to see stained glass getting some ink in a well circulated magazine.

All in all, a curious flashback.