The Quest

Before the work, the wonder... Autumn has arrived. On Sunday night (Oct. 13, the October full moon, the "hunter's moon,"  rose high over the river. It was a sight to behold. Small wonder that our ancestors worshiped her, and that the Woman Clothed in the Sun in the Book of Revelations—we call her Guadalupe in this hemisphere—stood between her horns, crowned with twelve stars. Ancient hymns describe Mary as " pulchra ut luna," pretty as the moon.  I missed last month's full moon entirely: clouded over every night. This month, hints and guesses, and dazzling little revelations between the trees. Patches of moonlight on the fields driving back from masses in Leavenworth on Saturday night. In the middle of the night, I awoke and the world outside my window, and the river, was pure silver. But silver isn't the only color in this season. The world is turning into gold in daylight. Last wednesday I woke early, and it was cold, really cold. T

The Story of a Shoe (but first, a smiling sun, a solemn moon and a couple of dahlias...)   On Divers Arts : ( De diversis artibus, a title stolen from Theophilus Presbyter, who wrote a treatise on art and stained glass almost a thousand years ago).*   I place an asterisk here to refer you below (at the end of this post) to the publisher's notes on the Dover translation of Theophilus' fascinating and arcane work. The intro is worth looking at, if only to learn the secret of how to harden metal tools. This fascinating book itself is available on Kindle. Disclaimer:  You are forgiven if you are not willing to give up 8 minutes or so of your life for this blend of art and alchemy. So feel to scroll down if you want. I'm using one piece— the quester's shoe—to show you the process of getting a piece of glass from pattern to painted. This first video shows cutting. No narration, just Schubert. Not a bad background. Three more short videos follow

Forward movement The firmament is done, and all that needs be done is to paint the sun and moon. Soon. The mechanical work of cutting a couple of hundred pieces of glass is largely over, and now endless fitting, trimming, and painting will begin, or better, continue.  Today, I realized that the image is starting to take on a life of its own; this sounds crazy, but it's showing me what needs to happen to enhance it. I'd opted for some simplification in some areas, and it said no, thank you. Get back to work.  An example: I had planned just to rough in with paint two tiny townscape pieces in the center of the image. Each is the size of my thumb, or smaller:   Well, no, that wouldn't do. This is what a couple of hours realized. Paint and shading still needed, but you get the point. So from macro scale (pieces of glass up to two feet long and 15 in. wide) to almost microcosmic scale:   Here above, the little yellow strips are the pattern pieces for the castle

A week of transitions The work is taking hold. And the hardest part is almost over. By early next week, I’ll have the entire piece cut out, some 120 pieces worth, and I’ll be working on spangling the evening sky with 60 some-odd   stars. Those stars are still to be cut on a diamond band saw before fusing: twelve cuts to each star. It’s impossible to cut the sharp inner angles any other way. Hard on the fingers, and noisy. But beautiful. And then about a hundred pieces to paint and fire. Pazienza. Here’s a video of the bedazzler process if you’re interested: click the arrow to watch it. You can increase its side with the square box on the bottom right after clicking it. An easier and very satisfying task has been to lay in sun rays made of glass “stringers,” strands of amber glass the diameter of angel hair pasta and spaghetti. They go down with Elmer’s white glue, which burns off entirely in the kiln but holds the pieces in place until the kiln takes over. They

Monday, Sept 9. Showers and sunbreaks, cooling down. Big thunderstorm on Saturday night, and heavy rain. Good for the forest, and for reducing fire danger. The work is starting in earnest, finally. The last few days have been finishing up the preliminary steps, tedious but essential. From the original enlargement of the 19th century wood engraving, the next step was to assign colors to all the areas and define the "cutlines", literally, where the glass will be cut. That first drawing of the cutlines is done on tracing paper, and each piece to be cut is given a number and an alphabetical code for the color it is. When working on a project of this size (more thatn 120 pieces to be cut in 18 different colors, organization and control) a lot of thinking and planning has to precede the actual work. Here's the traced cutline:  Then, the design is traced again onto pattern paper applying analog technology: a pencil and carbon paper. Using a pair of sheers that removes

This blog is a reflection on a project I'm working on during a two-month artist residency at the Grunewald Guild, an ecumenical art center not far from Leavenworth, WA. It's a easy way for me to share a complicated work I'm embarking on after my recently completed six-year term I as rector of the Arrupe Jesuit Community at Seattle University. Friends have asked me to share the process, which I do gladly. These entries will describe the process, and give me the opportunity to chronicle and share what I'm learning in an extraordinary place. To start with, here's the project description I presented to Seattle U last spring. I'm extraordinarily privileged to share this commission with Michael Schultheis, a remarkable artist who's become a friend. Michael is a polymath, a fine artist and an historian of mathematics.  You can see his work on his website, at  https://www.michaelschultheis.com/ Project Description:  The plan for this work is a collaboratio