photo finish

Not to brag or anything, but damn, this looks mighty fine.

glass wall in the chapel of the Oklahoma Heart Hospital, Oklahoma City OK

You may remember that this is the project I documented from beginning to end. If you are a new visitor, you can read all about this project here but remember to read from the bottom up for chronological order.

Here's another job that we did at the end of 2008 but I just now got a photo of it.

private residence, Houston TX

And finally, here's the best picture I have so far of the chapel window with all the jewels (even though you can't really see them well in this picture, they show up brilliantly in person) that we worked on all last week.

window behind the altar in the chapel at John Wesley United Methodist Church; Houston TX; 10' x 13'

outside view

bejewelled

The jewels and colors are much more apparant in person than in a photo.

I am woefully behind on my reading and may not catch up, rather I will join up further downstream.  This has been a killer week.  Our estimate of three days to finish the altar window for JWUMC was so wrong.  Actually, it took us two days to apply the jewels.  The first day we did the bottom two quadrants and only needed to use the 8’ ladder for some of it.  The second day it was supposed (key word here as the weather was better yesterday than it was today) to rain so we did not come prepared to do the two upper quadrants and we worked on cleaning off the excess adhesive and did not finish.  Today we did the last two quadrants working on a 12’ ladder the whole time.  The tube of adhesive was being balky (something kept stopping it up), the patterns were a pain to get up.  We finally ran out to get some sandwiches and a new tube of silicone and eventually finished about 7 PM.  Needless to say, I’m tired.  Tomorrow we will go back and finish cleaning up the bottom two quadrants which shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours (she says cause she is so good about estimating the time it takes to do ANYTHING).  Then we are going to try to beg off til after Easter so we can get going on the next job that we are already behind on.  

I hope tomorrow night finds us at home for the weekend.  Saturday we will have the g’kids.  We may stay at the country house next week while I get the full size art work for the next job finished. 

It hasn’t been all work and no play though.  Last night we had an evening out.  We went to a friend’s for dinner and socialzing with another couple, the two couples being some of our favorite people to hang out with and because of the different streams of our lives last year, it’s been quite a while since we all got together.  We had a really good time.

So, here are a few pics of the first two quadrants of the job.  Today was the perfect day to get some pictures of the reflected light colors from inside because we were there after dark, but Marc turned out the lights before I got the pictures and I was putting stuff in the truck and I was ready for home.  Oh well.  Here’s a few pics of the first two quadrants at the end of the first day.

transmitted light colors

reflected light colors

long day ahead

I’ve been run out of the kitchen.  Obviously, my attempts to help instruct were not appreciated.  It’s not like I really mind.  I still have plenty to do to get ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are going to do the first stage of the work for the altar window in the new chapel at John Wesley United Methodist Church.  Anyone catch the irony here...the non-religious person doing all this religious work?  What we are going to do tomorrow is to etch the 1 1/2" wide outline of the cross onto the existing glass.  This is a chemical process using a cream but messy in it’s own right.  You might recall I used it on the last job .

We don’t ordinarily work on site.  But both the processes we are using can be done on site.  After we drive for an hour and a half to get there.  I hope it doesn’t take more than 5 hours.  I also hope it only takes 3.  Because then we have an hour and a half drive back home.  We could have shortened the drive to 45 minutes but then we would have had to spend the night in town.  Which means we would have had to close up the house and schlep the cat back as well.  Seemed easier to go for the longer drive.

The other process is to glue the prepared jewels onto the existing glass as well.  We are going to try to get that accomplished in two days during the week between Christmas and New Year.  To that end I have also been selecting the colors and cutting the dicroic glass that is to be glued to the back of the various sized jewels.  I decided to arrange the colors warm to cool, yellows to blues.  I eliminated green so my colors are yellow, orange, red. pink, purple, blue.  Granted, I haven’t cut the purples and blues yet but it already seems a little weighted to the yellows.  Not sure what I think of that.  I guess it depends on if I can reconcile it with some sort of mythology or I decide it’s trite.

Of course, that only matters in transmitted light.  In reflected light, like at night, they will reverse from pale blue to gold.  Or they should and less than half of the total jewels have color anyway.

Oh well, long day tomorrow any way you look at it.

just in case you are still under the impression that art is easy...

I have been so busy the past two days.  Tuesday I filled a mold for an Oleander small bowl.  It took me all day, finally finished about 7pm.  Back when I was doing these a lot, I had it down to about 5 hours.  Actually, it didn’t take too much longer than that but the preparation takes time and I was dithering about the colors even though I was doing a color combination I had already done.  My notes were not complete on the previous one, I had failed to list one of the colors and though from looking at the picture I was pretty sure what it was, I had not brought those colors back with me to the city (one of the problems of having the studio split between the city and the country...when we hauled all that frit down to the country we thought we would be entirely set up there by the time we were ready to do more pate de verre).  On top of that, I misunderstood my own notes about the green and didn’t bring one of the colors for that that I needed.  This is a special order for a collector who selected this color combination from pictures.  The green and the brown will be a little different but the flowers and bowl color will be the same.  I think he’ll like it OK.  It should come out of the kiln tomorrow. 

Yesterday I worked on the full size drawings for the altar window of the JWUMC chapel...in the shop with the kiln rising to casting temperature (about 1550º) on a 90º day.  I was sweating buckets.  Then, I had an appointment for a design consultation for a new job when the shop was at peak temperature and the couple showed up wearing all black and she had on long sleeves.  I hustled them through the process and out the door.

about the drawing:  10’ wide x 12’ 10” high.  the small circles represent faceted and smooth jewels of varying sizes, some with dicroic glass.  Dicroic glass is a thin glass that has been coated to reflect and transmit different colors with a third color apparent when viewed from an angle.

Today I’m working on the full size drawings for the Oklahoma Heart Hospital chapel (but at least I’ll be able to turn on the AC if necessary).  I finally got the last bit of information yesterday that I need to get started after I threw a little tantrum on Tuesday.  Both the art consultant and interior designer were dragging their feet (I’d been waiting almost a week for the information) and as far as I knew the installation was still set for November.  Fortunately, the installation has been moved back to the end of December.  Ordering the glass is going to be a little dicey since the way the frames were built I have zero wiggle room.  

When I’m busy like this, mostly the stuff in my head is about work.

chapel glass at JWUMC

view from inside the chapel

We finally got the glass installed this week for the new chapel at John Wesley United Methodist Church in Houston TX.  It took us about 4 1/2 months to complete the work.  Too long, should have taken less time but I had a devil of a time getting the design work done.  I was fairly exhausted from the previous 18 months of non-stop work of one kind or another and try as I might, I just could not get a good start on the art work.  I spent a long time drawing and erasing.  I did finally get the designs done and after that it was just nose to the grindstone.  I think the finished project came out well.  I am happy but most importantly, they are happy.

view from the hall

inside the chapel - right hand panels

inside the chapel - doors

inside the chapel - left hand panels

left hand panels from the hall

detail - leaves

detail - sunflowers

detail - dogwood flowers

detail - blue jay

detail - the fern I cursed myself for

detail - turtle

a work in progress

No, no, not me, although I am a work in progress.

I thought I’d post a few pictures of the job we are working on (I’ve talked about it some in these posts:  brain block, presentation is everything and art is not pretty).  We’re way behind on the job, should have been finished by the end of March, and the bank account is reflecting that so much of my attention these days is focused on getting finished by the end of this month.

There are 14 panels that make up the entry (two doors and the side walls) to the new chapel at John Wesley United Methodist Church.  These shots are of the various panels in various stages of completion though none is complete.

on the rack:  the panels on the left have the sandblasting done but the stencil tape is still on, the backgrounds will be done with a different technique and will need a second stencil

on the table:  cutting the stencil

on the table:  the stencil is cut and ready for the blasting

in the booth:  carving the glass by sandblasting, the next stage is peeled off

If you would like to read in more detail about how this work is done you can visit here.

brain block

I’ve been working on the 1/3 scale drawing for the entry doors and side panels for a new chapel for the past week and for the past three days, I have made no progress whatsoever.  If I add something one day, I erase it the next.  I don’t know why I’m having so much trouble.  Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t like to do landscapes and that’s what this is.  Or it could be that I’m having trouble reconciling the scale of each element to the others.  I’m working larger than life size and I’m worried that in the main element, a dogwood tree, I have made the flowers too big which affects everything else.  I put some wild violets at the bottom and then realized, in relation to the dogwood flowers that they would be giants.  Erased them.  I want to put a rabbit nestled in the grass next to the tree trunk, but it makes the rabbit look enormous or else it’s a sapling of a tree.  I’ll probably make the dogwood flowers smaller when I do the full size drawing, but in the meantime, I’m having a hell of a time.

Yesterday I finally just gave up altogether and cleaned up the room where my drawing table is figuring that maybe my brain block was due to the clutter on my drawing table.  I barely had room for the drawing and could not find anything for all the piles of stuff.  Then I started on the living room.  I may not have made any progress on my drawing but at least I got something productive done yesterday.