To draw upon glass

A labour of love said my friend Jane. (of my church window project).

Ha. And plainly speaking. It can be. This window building…..

I think again on why I started this year of improvement… enrichment…And I think perhaps of that too… a labour of love.

And of course my scholarship mentoring and masterclasses have coincided with my getting the largest commission of my glass career. And I hesitate to write ‘so far’.

Uncertain I find I still am.

Perhaps I’ll be more certain at the end of my year. I wonder…

Anyway, where am I ? In my project… my journey. My church window.

After hitting the lows of design anxiety (see previous post), I soared thru the high of lead line certainty. And glass cutting certainty.

Glass. Let me tell you about the glass.. and my road trip with my stained glass mentor Debs to visit English antique glass and Coventry cathedral.

English antique glass based in Alvechurch The last flat glass blowers in the land. And I visited just days before they blew their last flat glass(p). (Dramatic eh). But true.

A glass workers sweetie shop.

Candy brights.

Swirling crystal sheets of pure magic beauty. Stacked with no applause in modest wooden racks. A tool of my trade. The jewel of my trade. And once again I think ‘labour of love’ after meeting Dave, The last flat glass blower. He was retiringly redundant after blowing glass for 20 years. Works of art on minimum wage.

Here my lovely glass for the church window and, my skip treasures.

And From English Antique Glass to Coventry… for inspiration. Why do we say ‘ you’ll get sent to Coventry?’… (and for some reason I think it’s also said as a punishment!)

Coventry. I’d visit it again in an instant. That cathedral and its story is just magnificent. Built from the wreckage of war. It made me very proud to think of those folks of Coventry. Raising such a building and the necessary strength and funds to do so. Another labour of love. With such immaculate attention to detail.

And this led me to look closer at John Piper in my down time over Christmas… I’d been blown away by his windows in the cathedral.

And I found him (on YouTube) to be a delightful chap…most endearing. And in print, his wonderfully frank ‘art or anti-art’ stained glass book. Well, it is to become my new bible.

All of my reasons and confusions why I want to challenge myself in this world of glass. … he says it. (On the first page).

I’ve rambled on again. .. to draw upon glass. ‘Think in glass’ said Christopher Whall … I do. But I want to catch the attention of John Piper too and do extraordinary, not just ordinary.

And so I drew and drew that roofscape townscape for my church window. Stood back and drew again. Refining until… until I was happy with how it inched its way up the hill in the real imagined way of Kendal, and until I was just too itching to hit the paint. And paint on that lovely glass. (I have a deadline after all!)