The Home Stretch

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 collaboration between glass artist  Fr. Tom Lucas S.J., and Michael Schultheis, a local painter, sculptor, and historian of mathematics. Both are established artists, with international portfolios.  The dimensions of the completed work will be approximately 7 feet wide by 5 feet high. 

The original image: 

Shown here, a very preliminary sketch of what how the piece might evolve. Note that the colors are not the final selection; this is suggestion, nothing more. Michael's cosmos is taken from another of his completed paintings: it's a place-holder for now.

The installation will be a mixed media work, with the earthly and familiar celestial realm rendered in painted and fired glass mosaic by Lucas, and the invisible cosmos into which the anchorite peeks, rendered in paint on an interlocking canvas by Schultheis, with the anchorite’s glass hand and head overlaying the canvas. 

Why this work in a Center for Science and Innovation?  This image, especially in the collaborative rendering by a contemporary artist/historian of mathematics and an artist/theologian, speaks to our ancient traditions of scholarship and the difficult search for meaning, and to our forward-facing desire to be in dialogue with the universe of knowledge from the micro- to the macro-cosmic levels. It would, we hope, serve as an encouragement, an inspiration, and a challenge to our students, faculty and staff: that we who are grounded on this earth must always look beyond, ad astra per aspera: through difficulties to the stars. And beyond.

Some background:  The original image first appeared in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"  p. 163). It was a wood engraving done in late-Medieval/early Renaissance style, perhaps by Flammarion himself. In it, a missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth meet, and in a spirit of adventure (or perhaps looking for a backdoor/shortcut into heaven) he sticks his head out into the universe.

                              Münster, Cosmos from Cosmographia, 1544

The cosmos he looks into in the original wood engraving suggests images from Sebastian Münster’s 1544 Cosmographia. An unattributed Wikipedia article describes the story:

“The idea of the contact of a solid sky with the earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works. In his Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels (‘Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds,’ 1864), he cites a legend of a Christian saint, Macarius the Roman, which he dates to the 6th century.  This legend includes the story of three monks (Theophilus, Sergius, and Hyginus) who ‘wished to discover the point where the sky and the earth touch.’

In vivid contrast to the traditional image, Michael Schultheis will provide a vivid mathematically-inspired field into which the Quester pokes his head: a realm of “analytical expressionism,” that combines ancient mathematical forms and very contemporary techniques and color fields. 

So that's the background of the project.  

I was lucky enough to get a residency at the Grunewald Guild, where I have worked for short periods for the last two summers. You can find out more about the Guild at its website: 

https://grunewaldguild.com

After packing up my life in Seattle, directing the annual Jesuits West Province Retreat in early August, completing a big installation at USF's Lone Mountain Campus (more on that project later...), and getting my kiln rewired, I arrived at Grunewald on Sunday Sept. 1. A view of the Cascades from the drive up, outside Sultan, WA:

The End of the Trail:  A view of the Wenatchee River from an old bridge next to the Guild:

 

Nestled in  the trees, my studio space, from my lodging;

 

Where I'm living:  

So here I am.  After a few days of getting the studio set up, I'm at work. The studio they've given me is large, bright and airy. Only the third time in 44 years as a Jesuit I've had a studio with windows, a rich irony for a glass artist. There's even a deck where I can work on warm afternoons, surrounded by Ponderosa pines. It feels a lot like Placerville where I grew up: where the leafy trees meet the pines. Autumn promises great colors. The air is clean, the days now are pleasantly warm and nights crisp.  Paradise.

Here, the studio set up. Four work stations: a cutting area, a painting area, a layout area for the completed pieces on top of a full scale print (Thank you, Kinkos!)  and the kilns (one large, one small for test pieces, well vented for a change) by the deck door: 

                       

   

                          

Some first explorations:  The painting station. More on this later: this is the biggest challenge, as I've never done a painted/fired project on this scale before. This is full-on medieval technique: complex, time-consuming, demanding and unforgiving.  I'll be good at it by the time I start firing. Practice makes perfect. 

                           

The other complexity is turning a 5 x 7 inch wood engraving into a cut line and pattern for a five x five-and one half foot glass mosaic. I'm using about 15 different colors of Bullseye Glass (made in Portland) and am in the process of figuring out how to cut it from 35 inch by 18 inch glass sheets. Managed to get out of Seattle with a van full of supplies, but forgot a crucial element: a roll of large tracing paper.  Fortunately, Amazon knows the way to Plain, WA, and the paper should arrive tomorrow or Friday.  In the mean time, I'm using every artist's favorite tool, Crayola 64s and Sharpies to begin the tedious but crucial task of establish colors and cutlines.  More to show once the tracing paper arrives. 

                           

Each piece of glass will be fired at least once, some twice. Mostly flat, but the stars, moon, and sun will be double plated, with a second layer tack fused to a lower layer.  So the work with have a three-dimensional character. This will be a wall-mounted piece, not a window, and the glass will be set on a reflective bed of white mortar.

Here a teaser, a preview of coming attractions: test pieces of the three blues that make up the sky (royal, cerulian, and periwinkle blue) with tack fused iridescent gold stars (about 64 in all to cut.  Yum. 

                           

One last treat: half moon (blurred a bit by the iPhone) over the Wenatchee River tonight.  A good omen.  Enough for now.  More as it emerges.  Hope you enjoy this.  I'd be glad for questions or comments. I wont be posting every day, but pop in to follow the progress if you want. I suspect that this blog will have some random ramblings, but you are all used to that. I'll try to keep the homiletics to a minimum, but given the splendid views, the quiet, and the contemplative nature of the work, I'm not making any promises. Feel free to share the url with others.

 Blessings.