Vitreosity

Painted Window Blog

A new stained glass blog is in town, by J. Kenneth Leap. It's called The Painted Window, and in just the last two days Ken has posted no less than 20 entries, all on his tests with silverstains. He's been doing very meticulous tests and getting some unexpected results. I have seen some of these results already, as I was at the recent AGG conference in Detroit, where he was happily showing off samples of his tests, like this set of samples using Reusche silver stains on a wide variety of glasses. This is far and away the most comprehensive set of silver stain test samples I've ever seen, and every studio I've worked at has done some type of silver stain tests.

Click to see a bigger image

Ken, thanks for being so generous with the results of your tests, an incredibly useful resource. I hope it sparks a silver stain renaissance, all thanks to you.

Judith Schaechter - Eastern State Penitentiary

Judith Schaechter is fundraising for a project making stained glass for the Eastern State Penitentiary. The site and the project seem ideal for Judith and I've no doubt she will raise the money. [update Tuesday Sept 21, 2010 - it was only announced last week and she is just about to the reach the $5,000 goal for successful minimum amount. Congratulations, Judith!]
If you haven't heard of it before, this is the first example I have seen for stained glass being funded in part by 'crowd fundraising'. The idea is that you set an amount that you wish to raise, then you make a video to explain the project, then set target amounts with what the donor gets if the project is funded. The kicker is that if you do not reach the minimum funding amount the whole thing just fails to happen and no one loses their money. If the fund limit is reached then the funding agency takes a small percentage. The first crowd fundraiser I heard of is Kickstarter.
I have not seen any stained glass projects on Kickstarter.

I was aware of Project Site from another project, a rather curious one where a comic artist raised money to create a giant steel dip pen. It was funded. To do a project on Project Site you have to be affiliated with a group called United States Artists.

No Great Modern Religious Artists?

In submitting the American Glass Guild 2011 Call for Papers to the College Art Association opportunites page, I noticed this other Call for Papers, from an aorganization I've never heard of -

Category: Calls For Papers
Posted by: Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art
Topic: Why Have There Been No Great Modern Religious Artists?
Deadline: 10/01/10

Many of the most prominent and celebrated artists of the 20th century have employed religious themes, iconography, and forms in their work. However, many have been ignored, dismissed as aberrant, or condemned as an improper combination of incompatible traditional and avant-garde values. We seek 20-minute papers for Symposium to be held day prior to CAA meeting in New York Feb 8, 2011 that examine specific examples of art from the 20th century employing religious subjects, symbols, and contexts. Paper proposals of no more than two pages double-spaced should be submitted with a cover letter and c.v. by Oct 1 to James Romaine (drjamesromaine@gmail.com) and Rachel Smith (rcsmith@taylor.edu. It is hoped that symposium participants will also contribute to the development of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art. See http://christianityhistoryart.org.

Posted on 09/14/10
Expires on 10/01/10 at midnight

Unfortunately the website address mentioned does not work.

Lorraine Lamond, Stained Glass Window installation

Video of an installation of a nice window from a Scottish stained glass artist Lorraine Lamond, who I'd never heard of until I'd seen this video. It's a nice simple painted style and, a big plus, the window has lots of yummy gold pink glass....

but man oh man she needs a better website.
[update September 9, 2010 - just got a note from Mark Campbell, who worked on the installation in the video. He wanted it known that Lorraine Lamond is indeed working on a new website, though it's still in early stages - www.lorrainelamond.com.]