February 26, 2008
Self Portraits in Glass
32 fused glass artists all doing self-portraits.
Self Portraits in Glass '06 and now, Self Portraits '08
Nice idea. Wildly diverse in quality but always nice to see another 'variations on a theme' project. It would be interesting to see the same thing happen with stained/painted glass artists.
self portrait by Cynthia Oliver, who was one of the main organizers of the project.
February 13, 2008
Millenium Windows in the UK
In the 8 years since passing into the 21st century, I seem to have missed the phenomenon of the "Millenium Window".
This is something that appears to have happened (mostly) in British Commonwealth countries from around the years 1997-2004. No substantial equivalent happened in the USA or anywhere else as far as I can tell.
detail, Millenium Window, Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland. by John K Clarke - 2001
I've gathered images and info on more than a dozen Millenium Window commissions throughout the UK.
Background
The only item I found mentioning the building of things 'Millenium' is in this article called The UK Millenium Construction Boom, which mostly describes money poorly spent when funded by the Millenium Fund, an arts lottery funding project in the UK. If you go to the bottom of the page, there is a list of 10 successful (according to the journalist) Millenium commissions, including the most famous one, the London Eye, also known as the Millenium Wheel.
In looking at specific stained glass window 'Millenium' commissions, there don't appear to be any thematic similarities between the different commissions, and stylistically they are quite diverse. Yet they are all 'Millenium' windows. Some were definitely funded by a 'Millenium fund' of some sort, but others were not.
St. Paul's Church Millenium Window
I came across my first Millenium window while browsing through a Flickr set by building fan
Millenium Window, in St. Paul's Church, Birmingham, England. Made by Rachel Thomas of Holy Well Glass in Somerset.
There is a little more info on Rachel Thomas from the 'award winners' page of The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass website.
What caught my eye in this window is the vantage point - it's a 'Heaven's eye view', sort of the reverse of an Italianate Trompe l'oeil Ceiling . So the viewer is looking down at the angels toward the distant ground below, as seen in this detail. An interesting perspective, and one I've never seen before in stained glass.
another detail - again via building fan
And this image is from the 'Worshipful Company' site...
In any case, in searching for information about this commission I started coming across other Millenium Windows that were every bit as interesting, and all made in the British Commonwealth...
Glasgow Cathedral Millenium Window
I like the work of John K. Clark. I've been to Glasgow and seen his Princes Square Parrots and his fish window at Cafe Gandolfi. I've linked to him before but it has been a long time, and there is lots of new work.
and he did this fascinating Millenium Window For Glasgow Cathedral.
I particularly like his incorporation of text in design, a recurring theme in recent projects.
The Millenium window is a good example of that, though it's only with the closer shot that you see the text at all.
I also like how he plays with the black lines throughout, hiding the leadlines so that it melds together into a kind of undulating field of lines and colors and letter shapes.
Even closer - to see better how the text and image are interwoven.
Goodrich Castle Millenium Window
A unique Millenium Window in Goodrich Castle, Hereford, Worcestershire, England.
It's odd that there is stained glass at all, especially modern stained glass, seeing that all exterior pictures of the site make it look like a total ruin. but the stained glass is there in the chapel.
This is just one picture from a blogpost by Ian Grey that shows the windows in a clearer context. Exterior shot showing the Millenium window just to the left of the gateway.
The close-up pictures show the etched detail. This and small painted details go on throughout the window.
photos from the Stuart Herbert Flickr Set
Busby Parish Church Millenium window
Millenium Window, Busby Parish Church, 2000, Church of Scotland. Design/Fabrication by Cannon-Macinnes, Glasgow, Scotland. Simple and contemporary, with a wee nod to Mackintosh. I know Linda Cannon (the Cannon of Cannon/Macinnes) from when she visited Boston nearly 20 years ago. She's a smart and talented colleague and I'm glad to see her doing such nice work.
Close up showing the deep acid-etched text. Nice that it's acid-etched and not sandblasted - makes all the difference in a situation like this.
St. Mary's Church Millenium Window
Flickr page by 'TheRevSteve' showing the Millenium Window at St. Mary's Church, Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, England.
full shot
details with center text
Chester Cathedral Millenium Window
Ros Grimshaw did a Millenium Window (as often referred to as the Creation Window) for Chester Cathedral.
You can listen to a 10 minute BBC Radio program from 2004 on the Chester Cathedral Creation/Millenium Window. Ros Grimshaw has Parkinson's Disease and was working on this window while in hospital. I've seen images of her work in the past that is more geared toward painted design, like this from Saint Augustine’s Scaynes Hill, with her windows at the bottom of the page.
Links to more Millenium Windows
Caroline Swash did an abstract Millenium Window for The Godolphine School, in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England.
Mark Cazalet did a Millenium Window, not in stained glass but in etched and engraved clear glass, for Worcester Cathedral.
Rather more conventional pictorial Millenium windows can be seen at St. Peters Church, Boughton, Monchelsea and St Mark's Parish, Dukinfield, Church St., Dukinfield, Cheshire, and another from St. Matthews, Langford, and yet another one, this time designed by the villagers in Towersey, Oxfordshire, with a better view from a Flickr page from 'Ascendingkitty'.
And finally, the most curious. The Millenium Window at St. Lawrence Church, Hatfield. This window has gained a certain notoriety from the inclusion of a tribute to local boy made good Thomas Crapper. Credited, wrongly as it turns out, with inventing the modern day flush toilet, he nevertheless founded a plumbing company, which exists to this day.
On that strange note, onward into the next millenium!
[update - just found a new English Millenium Window only to hear about it because it was destroyed by fire in March of 2008 - The Millenium Window (2000-2008) at St Nicholas's church Radford Semele, Warwickshire.]
[update - April 29, 2008 - just spotted a new Flickr group devoted to Millenium Windows]
February 03, 2008
McDonald Peace Windows Project
A different 'variations on a peace-themed' window project -
I heard about the McDonald Peace Window project some time ago, but was prompted to research a bit by this new article in the Tacoma News Tribune on the current exhibit at the Washington State History Museum. At first, I only came upon another article, in the Seattle Times. Finally I found the official McDonald Memorial Peace Windows Project website. At the official site, there is information on the overall story of the project and descriptions of the individual panels, as well as information on the artists who worked on the project. Though, oddly, no info on which artists worked on which panels.
The general story, in brief, from that site -
In his war travels, Father McDonald made a habit of stopping at sanctuaries victimized by the conflict. On these visits he picked up broken fragments of stained glass from the rubble. .... For 55 years the glass was kept in a cardboard box... One evening in 1999, three years before Fred McDonald died, he shared the story of the shards with astonished friends around the dinner table.... Till the end of his life, Fred’s stories captivated people.... He remembered his interactions with men and women struggling to survive the conflict. As he talked about those meetings, Armelle conceived of a series of windows, each with its own brief story.
This panel is #19, with fragments from Kolner Dome, Germany - also known as Cologne Cathedral, the one that recently dedicated the Gerhard Richter Window.
and this is #20, The Russian Chapel, Weisbaden, Germany. A very simple design, yet I like the idea of using the fragments for the figure rather than fitting them inconspicuously into the border or background.
Who, in these turbulent times, cannot sympathize with a work of art that is a plea for peace. I like the idea of using fragments of old panels within contemporary designs. I see it as a kind of dialogue over centuries.
Dialogue is good, and especially important seeing that the theme is peace...
January 18, 2008
1000 Points of Peace
From the blog Mosaic Art and Glass Art - An article about the artist named Ragtime, who is a Vietnam Vet on a mission to create 1000 variations of the Peace Symbol in stained glass. As of this writing, he is at about #175. Up til now, as far as I can tell, he's only done these in a simple mosaic style, all in copper foil, with many of them incorporating fused glass and some of them all fused. Just a thought, but it would be interesting if some of them were done in lead came and some of them painted and/or stained...
1000 variations of any symbol is a pretty tall order...
#133 The Peace Wheel
Though on the other end of the spectrum in terms of subject matter, this does remind me of skull-a-day, which is a blog about a guy who is currently in the midst of a project to create an image of a skull every day for one year, posting a new one daily. A recent entry is this image of a glass mosaic skull, and earlier he took a beginner's stained glass class to make a stained glass skull. This blog has garnered quite a bit of attention and, amazingly, he even landed a book deal!
[update - Feb 23, 2008 - Something I didn't know when I posted this is that 2008 is the 50th anniversary of the creation of the peace symbol, created by British designer Gerald Holtom for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and that the symbol was created from a combination of the semaphore symbols for the letters 'N' and 'D'.]
[update- March 22, 2008 - nice BBC online article on the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol.]
July 20, 2007
Star of David Blog
A blog entirely devoted to images and stories related to the Star of David.
The variety of images and wealth of information on what would seem a narrow subject is astonishing. On top of this there are more than a dozen references to stained glass incorporating the Star of David. Very interesting all around.
I've always been intrigued by the idea of how different designers in different situations incorporate and interpret the same idea or image or symbol. I'm also interested as I've done my own variation on a Star of David in stained glass.
one of the stained glass images featured on the blog -
Stained glass panel from Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
image via flickrite fugue
The hebrew lettering in the center represents the word for 'peace'.