After the Protestant Reformation put the stained glass industry out of
business in the 16th Century, diamond paned glazed windows became popular in
both churches and secular buildings. The word probably comes from the Latin
‘quadrellum’, meaning little square or from the French ‘carre’ meaning square.
(https://www.coddenham-parish.uk/what-is-a-quarry/)
Quarries were often painted with motifs of flora, fauna and vignettes with
enamel and silverstain.
They epitomize the “decorative” and as such are both charming and capable of
the subtle yet persistent megainfluence of the domestic goods we encounter frequently.
“Decorative” as a derogatory term in the arts is recent and regrettable.
Perhaps it’s an attempt by those interested parties to ensure the value of “art
for art’s sake” and distinguish it from ordinary, household experiences—which
obviously are the actual carriers of the most influence as you see them all the
time and can’t escape them.
Grimoire is contemporary updating on this historical form. For me, it also
serves as an index of experimentation with what can be done with combining
flowers, birds, insects, various patterns and glass techniques. A grimoire is a
book of spells. To my way of thinking, every artwork is an attempt at a spell,
a prayer or an evocation of sorts. How else to explain the intention of any
artwork to claim special status and transcend representation or artifact-ness?
What exactly is Grimoire intended to evoke? I see it as an open-ended
opportunity to reflect on the history of marginalized women’s work—witches,
proto-pharmacists—and on the long-dismissed status of decoration, reimagining
both as equally transformative.
During the creation of this piece Renee Good and Alex Pretti
were murdered by DHS agents.
Because I post frequently about my artwork but almost never
about politics, I feel morally obliged to say something about my feelings
regarding the state of the world.
My art may not show it, but I am in a state of great fear
for our democracy and disdain and utter disgust with our current
administration.Politically, I am a lefty
democrat who votes in every single election and attends protests (which, btw, I
do not enjoy.I would rather be
doing just about anything else!)
Very deliberately, I have chosen not to make political art.
It often feels reductive to me, even when I agree with its message, and I’m
more interested in addressing the complex emotional expressions of individual
experience. My work is personal rather than persuasive and given that those
drawn to it tend to share my sensibilities, overtly political content would
likely amount to preaching to the choir. This also applies to how I engage with
social media.I rarely post political
content.
There are times, like right now, when this attitude
can feel like indulgence.For the
record, I don’t think it is. People always need to attend to the full spectrum
of feelings and experience, no matter the political climate.But I felt moved to explain this in case
people are wondering if what appears to be silence means I don’t care and am
not acting on my beliefs.I do, very,
very much care and I do act accordingly.I just choose to express it by voting and protesting and not in my art
or on social media.
And now, on to the “The Golden Hour”.
...a paean to self-soothing in hard times.
"Golden Hour" 31.5"x27"
Conceptual:
Never mind the fact that I ripped the original "Reynardine" window from this yellow border and was seeking to reuse it somehow rather than throw it out...
In Creative and Mental
Growth, child psychologist Viktor Lowenfeld describes ages 7-9 as
the Schematic Stage. At
this time, children develop symbols for things in the world. The radiating sun
is one of the most obvious examples: a circle to stand for the sun, with lines
to signify light or heat. Another would be individual blades of grass growing
up from the bottom line of the page used to symbolize the ground.
In “The Golden Hour” I used this very recognizable schema as
the organizing principle to arrange doodled elements of flora.Basically, I just wanted to create a garden
of imagined images—a big theme of my work for a while now.I can’t seem to stop and as long as I find
this intriguing and inspired, I will continue.
Working sketch
Apropos of politics, Dear Orange Leader has forced people to
choose sides when it comes to conceptualizing reality as either science facts
or “alternative facts”.As if there
weren’t reason to hate the guy enough, this hits close to home for me.There is nothing more wonderful to me than
“alternative facts”. I do not like being forced to choose between subjective
and objective reality.But I suppose an
object lesson in the perils of fantasy is well taken.However, I hope people never forget the value
of myth.As I have said many times
recently, expressing one’s imagination is a RADICAL ACT.Especially when “alternative facts” are being
used to enforce some kind of sick conformity with a fascist.
“The Goden Hour” is intended, as much of my work is, as a
picture to get lost in the details and to reflect on how nature and imagination
work in symbiosis. Is there a place in the brain where the soul and brain
matter “meet”? Is there a place in the material world where that meeting
becomes manifest? To me, that is the “function” of “The Golden Hour”.
The piece was created with glass enamels—red for
flesh and stencil black (formerly made by Reusche) mixed together to make a
brown.I mix with water and some
glycerin. No gum arabic because I am painting on a sandblasted surface.Yes—that was one crazy stencil!It is basically the entire image in
silhouette. It took over a day to cut it by hand (Xacto #11, about 20 blades
died to make this stencil) and about 30 mins to sandblast. LOL, throwing the
stencil in the garbage is always a treat.
I would say the piece
ended up having about 5-7 firings (1250 F) all in all.I like to engrave the fired paint!I also use files and diamond burrs unplugged.
I go back and forth between painting, firing and then engraving—5-7 times as
stated.The yellow color is actually Orange
silver stain—fired right on the paint layer! So there.
The glass is a Lambert’s white opalescent on clear.The piece will be in a lightbox which is a
dammed pity because that glass does lovely things to sunlight.
Technical+Conceptual=The Golden Hour—
I think it’s false to find meaning only in the conceptual
aspect. As the maker, I certainly find myself engaged in the making 90%
compared to the 10% thinking about it! Or something like that.
The piece required an intense focus on “being in the
present” with the image.Each stroke of
the liner brush (Kafka #4 and #0 script liners) was an infinite world unto
itself…more or less. The downside is that’s a hard place to get to mentally,
but the upside is that’s very self-soothing!
The million dollar question in any artist interview is
always some variation on “where do you get your ideas from?” I hate being asked this, but I always want to know when I am
reading about other artists! So, here’s a new piece with an interesting idea development
trajectory and I can say something about where the idea came from, or what
inspired me, but I am not convinced that this will be very interesting or
insightful. I certainly don’t think it would add much to someone’s enjoyment
(or disdain, whatever) of the actual piece. What’s interesting is the journey
it took from inception to completion. When looking at a piece like this one, it
might be natural to assume I set about doing an illustration of the Fairport
Convention song “Reynardine”. But that was actually the last step! The piece
had exactly nothing to do with the song or folk legend for 99% of its creation.
Reynardine, as mentioned, is a song by Fairport Convention, another great version by Bert Jansch.
It is based on an old folk ballad from England.The original tells a story of “bandit or outlaw who encounters a young
woman in the wilderness and seduces or abducts her. The song ends with a
warning to young women to beware of strange men.” In the early 1900’s a verse connecting the character to the character from the
middle ages, Reynard the Fox, appeared. In this case as a “werefox” (who knew!)
The last verse goes:
Sun and dark she followed him
His teeth did brightly shine
And he led her up a-the mountains
Did that sly, bold Reynardine
click to embiggen!
That’s a lot of ink for part of a piece that didn’t exist
until it was nigh well completed!The
point being, an artist may not know until later what in the heck the thing is
even about.I certainly don’t.
graphite, 2019
The piece began with a drawing done in 2020, during Covid,
which I will remind you was 2020-2023. I did a lot of fancy pencil drawings
during that time.This was the last
one.How did it arise?Who knows.I usually start with a face doodle from a sketchbook and stick it on a
body and then draw the whole thing over.The one thing I DO recall is that I was thinking I should age my
characters since they all seem around 12 years old and every year I get further
and further away from that! When I work figuratively, I like to be able to
relate to my characters. As is typical the sketch lay in my flat file for
several years before I felt any need to do anything with it. During that time,
I did make this video with the drawing.
In January of 2025, I finished the stained glass for
Super/Natural, the wooden dome structure was still being built, and I didn’t
want to start a new project until the entire thing was done and out of my
studio and brain.As a time filler, I
decided to do the top part of the old woman figure in blue glass.When the dome was done, however, I didn’t
feel like working on it and proceeded to make two other pieces in the spring of
2025. Wondermoths Dirty Countertop
Then in the summer I taught a Corning Studio.Another instructor there at the time was my
friend Laura Donefer.She came into the
classroom one day and was fiddling with some of my samples and layered them in
a way I hadn’t thought of before, which I found very exciting, and it occurred
to me it would be perfect to resolve the blue old lady using her idea.
But then my dad passed away. All previous plans were
canceled for a while there and then the semester began and yikes…
I picked up the project again on and off during the fall,
working on the figure with the Laura Donefer idea.It’s common to reflect on one’s own mortality
when a loved one passes, and piece took on new meaning as I dealt with the
grief relating to my father’s death.
When I work figuratively, I often make the figure in glass
before I even have an idea for the rest of the piece.It’s just a character with no context, no
background. When I was a cigarette smoker, I would look at the character and
smoke cigarettes until some resolution suggested itself.I quit smoking New Years of 2000 and spent a
year trying to figure out how to make art again!This “contemplative” part of the process was
the most affected and I confess, I still feel it.So, I chew gum and stare at the light
table…!Or more commonly putz around in
Photoshop doing things to pictures of the figure until one sticks.
Tryin' to figure out a resolution for the figure
In this case it was the motif of the
“semi-arch/ wreath of flowers”.I liked
the way it suggested being “cut off” compositionally, which fit in with the
death motif.And then, all at once, I
saw it!The shape was the Grim Reaper’s
scythe blade!Perfect!Yay!
Then I went and did a BIG CREATIVE NO-NO. And what might
that be?I decided to make it look like the
bouquet the bird is barfing in “Efflorescence” (Link: scroll down!). Of course, what I really wanted
was to make an analogous bouquet that had all the same wonderful qualities
(dark, mysterious, glowing) but I also wanted it to be simultaneously different…well
that’s kind of a big ask!See what my
brain did?It said, “make it the same,
but different”!Lol, brain, you goose! I set about this by printed out pictures of the glass
layering from “Efflorescence”, studied it carefully blah blah blah blah blah…
Me trying to copy me and failing (thank god!)
And I made a thing.It looked really different from “Efflorescence”, which made me cranky, and
the color didn’t work great with the figure and therefore I didn’t like
it.That’s why this is a BIG CREATIVE
NO-NO.Disappointment was baked in from
the start, and I knew it.But creativity
is hard.In my mind creativity is predicated
on going into the unknown and here I was depending on something I did a few
years back.
Even worse?It wasn’t
actually bad.There’s nothing that gets
to me more than something that’s just okay.What the fuckety fuck??? GAAA!I
think I would have gone for it except for this: I also didn’t like the size of
the copperfoil lines and the color of the border.There’s mediocrity and then there’s a tipping
point of just too much mediocrity…. Not to mention that every fix I tried just
led to other complications and the piece (especially in person—it’s not so
evident in photos) started to look heavy, technically wonky and
over-engineered.
I made a thing.
NOW WHAT?
When I finally surrendered to the idea it just wasn’t
working and I should take it apart and start again I felt great relief.Especially as I decided to save the other
parts and assemble them as a separate “study”.It’s not so bad to make two pieces instead of one!Because I am clever, I figured I would remake
the “scythe blade” sections in a new colorway before disassembling anything,
JUST. IN. CASE.And if I could make
something better than the first, then I would go ahead and take it apart.
unmaking the thing
the other part of the unmade thing
And this is what happened.I really liked the new colorway (and now I had two sets of “scythe blade
parts and could experiment with mixing and matching them in two different ways
and see what happens which is always a ton of fun). So, I went ahead and
disassembled the original piece. Disassembling copperfoil constructions (especially layered
ones) is akin to sticking your hand down a garbage disposal and turning it on.What a PAIN IN THE ASS that is!(and YES: some parts may get damaged or
destroyed in the process which is why not every repair is worth it) And when
its finally apart, the glass is covered with filth and goo.It took a whole day just to clean that gunk
up and restore the glass to workable condition.
As for the “study” piece: having decided that I would make a
second piece, the conditions had to be radical acceptance.If tight-assery had led the first attempt to
utter mediocrity, then the study had to be FUN.FUN, DAMMITOL, FUN!Fun for me
looks like this.I sit with pictures in
photoshop and think, “what would be fun?”.Then I think “Netflix would be fun!” or “doomscrolling reels on
Instagram would be really fun!”Hmmm…… When did I get to the point where art wasn’t fun?This is a pity, methinks. But playing as an
adult doesn’t feel like playing did when I was a child.
Redone new wreath area
Comparison of blue layers (the new one is one the left sides)
Redone panel
FUN turned out to be a fox.Really an extremely random choice.But I felt a “fun vibe” emanating.At first, I didn’t want to use it because I have used it before (in
“Fleeing Foxes”) and I kinda have a rule not to reuse characters.But I have entered into a stage of life where
that rule feels tyrannical and pointless.Plus, it won’t be the same when I am done.And, of course, it looked FUN. In the spirit of FUN, DAMMITOL, I put a flower in the fox’s
mouth.Extra fun! All this happened in less than an hour.And with the fox, the old scythe blade
sections will look just fine, so it’s no longer even mediocre, it has been
somehow redeemed! Which would be good but now…the pressure is back on.Oh no!
Photoshop phox
The power of a “study” piece is all psy-ops.I give “perfection” (whatever that even is) a
low priority and FUN a higher one and allow myself, not to be mediocre, but to
be shitty and voila!Pressure to make
something good is probably the stupidest way to make something good and I know
it…and yet that thought doth persist.
Then something magical happened.This came completely from left field, so to
speak. I very suddenly (while exercising, if you must know) saw in my head that
I could make one piece out of both pieces.Because stained glass is transparent, I could flip the study to create
an archway out of the scythe blades (which will no longer read as such, btw,
but whatevs)
I was giddy with excitement!I made a sketch in photoshop.I
sent it to my trusted pal, Tina who said, “but what does it mean?” … oh yeah, it
went from a sitting woman to a woman somehow in relationship to a fox.Sitting people in art don’t need a
narrative.Usually, they are
portraits.But even when they aren’t
they are understood as a complete idea unto themselves.No one demands to know why they are just
sitting there. But if you add a fox?Well, that does change things a bit. Now it has a real narrative, people
wanna know…what does the fox mean? whoooopsy….!
Well, to be honest, I couldn’t care less about narrative and
if it looks good, it gets a pass and I figure the idea that an artist should be
somehow in control of narrative is nuts.That’s an art school torture device at the end of the day.Real art in the real world?No one gives a shit about the artist’s
narrative control unless the piece is so utterly bereft that’s the ONLY thing
it has going for it…sad times…. People are really good at reading stories into
pictures.They don’t need to be told,
even when its super ambiguous.
The whole idea of Reynardine happened in a split
second.Feel free to ignore it.In the song, it is implied the women
Reynardine lures are murdered.I mean, aren’t
they always???? There are so many folk tales, ballads, true crime accounts,
news stories, blah de blah de blahblahblah where the woman gets killed in the
end. You’d almost be tempted to think it’s always open season on women.
ANYWAY: In my piece, she lives to a ripe old age.Perhaps her dying thought is to recollect
that she lost her virginity to a werefox.
And that, dear reader is how a piece about covid became a
piece about feminism, while always being a piece about death and dying.
When I was just a tadpole, I remember the horrible crisis of
desperately wanting to make art but having no clue what I wanted to make art
about.
What a dilemma, all this art energy and nothing to tie it
to!It didn’t help that the one thing I
understood art to be was incredibly profound.No pressure there!
I was still a painting major.We were given little guidance—which I
resented at the time but now I understand that to find one’s voice is an inside
job and that it’s a fine line between influence and coercion.Maybe I thought my teachers should have done
more, but I was left with the sense that I did it all myself and how is that
not actually a really good thing?
In making visual art, I think of it as having three
domains.The visual, the material and
the intellectual/expressive.Eyes, hands
and brains. All three are the subject of a work of art in different
proportions.But when we talk of the subject
of a work of art, I think we reflexively think of it as the objects in the
picture.We think a picture of fruit is “about”
the fruit.But to the artist, it may
merely be an excuse to get involved with paint.Or color.Or shapes.
One has choices.For
example: historically speaking, on could pick some point on the design spectrum
between optical realism and non-referential abstraction as a mode.Another mode might be appropriation or
ready-mades.
As subject, one could mine the territory of NOUNS—people,
place and things; or still life, landscape or figuration.Either as a recognizable subject or a
launching point if one was abstract.
Blah blah blah…I started this post out with a lot of time
and now I have none.So, no. more musing
on the mechanics of creative art making.
“Dirty Countertop” is a still life. Duh.I haven’t done a still life since I was a
sophomore in the painting department at RISD.This example was when I wanted to be Wayne Thiebaud.
Still life—
When I was just a tadpole, I remember the horrible crisis of
desperately wanting to make art but having no clue what I wanted to make art
about.
What a dilemma, all this art energy and nothing to tie it
to!It didn’t help that the one thing I
understood art to be was incredibly profound.No pressure there!
I was still a painting major.We were given little guidance—which I
resented at the time but now I understand that to find one’s voice is an inside
job and that it’s a fine line between influence and coercion.Maybe I thought my teachers should have done
more, but I was left with the sense that I did it all myself and how is that
not actually a really good thing?
In making visual art, I think of it as having three
domains.The visual, the material and
the intellectual/expressive.Eyes, hands
and brains. All three are the subject of a work of art in different
proportions.But when we talk of the subject
of a work of art, I think we reflexively think of it as the objects in the
picture.We think a picture of fruit is “about”
the fruit.But to the artist, it may
merely be an excuse to get involved with paint.Or color.Or shapes.
One has choices.For
example: historically speaking, on could pick some point on the design spectrum
between optical realism and non-referential abstraction as a mode.Another mode might be appropriation or
ready-mades.
As subject, one could mine the territory of NOUNS—people,
place and things; or still life, landscape or figuration.Either as a recognizable subject or a
launching point if one was abstract.
Blah blah blah…I started this post out with a lot of time
and now I have none.So, no. more musing
on the mechanics of creative art making.
“Dirty Countertop” is a still life. Duh.I haven’t done a still life since I was a
sophomore in the painting department at RISD.This example was when I wanted to be Wayne Thiebaud.
I did a still life now because I have been channeling the
spirit of Joris Hoefnagel and drawing lots of froooooots.Maybe they are an allegory about what happens
when you don’t wipe down your countertops.Maybe its drawing a parallel to other types of fleshy bodies.
Joris likes to draw combinations of fruit, insects, flowers
and calligraphy.I wish I had made his
work, that’s how much I love it.
The big dilemma with this piece (as it often is) is where to
cut the glass.One can carefully follow
the outlines of the objects, but then one must connect them to the sides of the
piece leading things to look like crappy coloring book illustrations. This
leads to a strange look like things being caught in spiderwebs or having superfluous
antennae. Because I am engraving flash glass, I can put either no cut lines and
just work large unbroken sheets like a painting or….something else.
If you wish to read and learn about the dome, there is a brief essay at the bottom of this post.
Here are a bunch of photos (mostly) by Dom Episcopo
“Super/Natural” is a stained glass environment
representing a “three-tiered cosmos”.
In 2023, I became an artist in residence at the Penn Center
for Neuroaesthetics.This project is the
result of attending their lab meetings over the course of a year and a half and
is the time it took to complete the dome.
The dome is 8 feet high at its tallest and 5’6” in diameter.The windows were designed and fabricated by me.
The dome architecture was designed by me in collaboration with carpenter Patrick
Murray who contributed his architectural background and engineering skill.
I would like to express my immense gratitude to my parents,
Moselio and Barbara Schaechter. My father, who served as the chairman of
Microbiology at Tufts University for 23 years, awakened in me a love of
science—especially through his collection of antique mushroom books, with their
fantastic illustrations. My mother, former director of the League School of
Boston (now the League School of Autism), nurtured my curiosity about the human
mind from an early age through books and conversations. Thank you, Mom and Dad,
for your inspiration and support.
One of the research themes at Penn Center for
Neuroaesthetics is “the built environment and wellness”.It was there that I learned of
biophilicdesign. Biophilic principles are often used in hospitals and office buildings
to create “refresh rooms” and non-secular chapels—places to lower stress and
encourage feelings of serenity and peace. It comes as no surprise that reconnecting
with nature is healing. Like many urban
people, I myself have very rarely experienced wild spaces. I don’t own a car,
and I have been city-bound most of my life. Super/Natural is a response to that
condition.
Without delving too deeply into mysticism, it seems biophilic
design offers an opportunity to reconcile human consciousness with the
environment. It challenges the perceived divide between mind and body, person
vs nature, as well as the mental distinction between "interior vs.
exterior" or "self vs. not-self”, revealing it as a perceptual
illusion. While this distinction has practical heuristic value, it also fosters
loneliness and isolation.I suspect this
disconnection enables social and ecological harm. My goal was to create
something that “heals” this divide.
By situating the viewer at the center of a three-tiered
cosmos, Super/Natural invites contemplation of both inner space—how we
experience environments neurologically and psychologically—and outer space—how
we extend ourselves into our surroundings. I aimed to inspire reflection on our
interdependence with all life on Earth, encouraging an internalized sense of
connection akin to viewing the "blue marble," from within rather than
from the far-off perspective of outer space.We are ultimately connected to, not just observing nature.
Although I am not religious, I chose a chapel as a direct
reference to spiritual architecture that uses art for reflection, awe, and
transcendence. As a stained glass artist, I am acutely aware that my work is
exhibited in lightboxes, not in churches and temples as is traditional. Thus, I
have thought for years that I would like to make a “personal shrine” for a
single viewer. This goes against the convention of thinking in the monumental
terms suggested by cathedrals as well as many contemporary art venues. Western
culture tends to revere the huge and sublime while undervaluing the small,
intimate, and inscendent. This preference for grandeur creates physical and
psychological distance between the viewer and the stained glass. I sought to
collapse that separation. Moreover, stained glass in churches and public spaces
is almost always designed for a collective audience. In the age of mass media,
there’s a temptation to assume that reaching the largest number of people is
inherently better. Super/Natural challenges that notion by offering a
semi-private experience.
The imagery in Super/Natural references nature, but it is
entirely derived from my imagination. It is intended to evoke the sense of
nature as understood by a human mind—similar to the natural history images that
influenced my childhood. They are, ultimately, about invoking nature more than
depicting it. At PCfN, I learned that creativity is often tested using the
'Alternative Uses Test,' in which subjects are asked to generate as many uses
as possible for a common object—like a brick—within a limited time. The test is
scored across four dimensions(fluency,
originality, flexibility and elaboration).The flower and bird imagery in the dome was a challenge to my
imagination.How many flowers, birds and
bugs could I invent before my inspiration ran dry? What would this say about
the potential for the inventive capacity of drawing? I hope I have discovered
that imagination is potentially infinite!
Imagination is often thought of as frivolous or a waste of
time. But what could be more amazing than the extension of consciousness beyond
what feels possible, beyond reality? It
is my belief that expressing one’s authentic imagination is the most important,
radical thing we can do as conscious beings. It is my belief the mind can conjure feelings
of awe independent of external experience (and substances) and hopefully the
dome will prove to be an example of that.
One final historical link that bears mentioning is that the
botanical prints that inspired the work were often created by women as this was
a permissible art form for them in the 17th Century. No wonder they
are so amazing looking—all that artistic energy had to be funneled into this
one constricting art mode!
The composition is based on the cross-cultural theme of a
"three tiered cosmos". The ten panels at eye level represent
the "Earthly Domain". These panels consist of images of plants and
insects in a profusion of exuberant life. Below are ten panels of
wallpaper representing the "Under World". The imagery includes
roots, unhatched larva, buried bones, mycelium and other motifs of
underground. The "Heavens", the geodesic dome itself, contains
45 triangular panels. This area depicts a murmuration of colorful birds
and stars. Underfoot is a carpet of my design depicting a whirlpool,
mirroring the spiral of birds above.
Techniques
I use a material called "Flash Glass”.Flash glass is a type of hand-blown glass
with a paper-thin veneer of intense color on a base layer of lighter
color.One reason there is a lot of
color in each section of my pictures is that the flash glass is layered, typically
two pieces deep, red on clear and blue on clear with the addition of black
enamel and silverstain.
I cut the glass using a steel wheel cutter and a grozing or
running pliers.The next step is
sandblasting, a process by which one can remove the colored layer, to get
patterns and tones.After sandblasting,
I engrave finer details using rotary tools and create smooth tonal shifts in
color with diamond hand files.
When the engraving is done, I
add black enamel which fires onto glass permanently. I also use silverstain
(which is yellow). I used a fuchsia transparent enamel in places as well.This is all the paint I use--all the other
color is the flash glass itself.The use
of red and blue glass, combined with small amounts of black, yellow, and pink
enamel, produces a full-color spectrum within a single section of glass,
eliminating the need for a cut line.
The wallpaper originated from
two high-resolution images of previous stained glass windows I created based on
pencil sketches. These images were manipulated with Photoshop software to
combine them with stained glass-like transparency.
__
Here are the “Cliff Notes” supplied by Chatgpt:
Summary of Key Themes
Biophilic
design and reconnection with nature
Healing
psychological and social divides and creating connections
Interior
vs. exterior space and dissolving boundaries
Imagination
as a force for creativity and transformation
Resistance
to monumentalism in favor of intimacy
The
symbolic structure of the three-tiered cosmos
Technical
mastery of stained glass craft
Art as
a site for awe, reflection, and transcendence
These themes are interconnected, reinforcing the overarching
goal of Super/Natural to invite viewers into a deeply personal,
immersive experience that explores the connections between self, nature, and
imagination.
Dear Readers: in the interest of posting anything at all I am declaring a stoppage on editing the text of this post. Lets just say, it was kinda getting away from me and the words felt wordy etc. So here it is, just like it was last time I opened the document, for better or worse.
Panel #6 of 7 is done! :)
PART I
I now have a name for the dome: "Super/Natural"*.
*subject to change.
I'm sure you already know that the most disliked word in
English is "Moist". The second most must be "spirituality", amirite?
I know someone who used the word spirituality in her
artist's statement in college and her professor said she would fail her for the
course unless she changed it. I believe she kept it in.Willing to die on that hill—I admire
that!But I understand the professor who
was picturing some new age hellscape replete with the purplest of purple
crystals.
I was raised by two materialist atheists. My dad was a
scientist. Not just any type of science mind you, but a microbiologist.I have heard it said that physicists scan
skew towards the mystical, but not biologists!All that goo really reinforces the material side of reality! But
wait!There’s more….My mother was the
director of a school for severely autistic children—the type that make any
thought of a just and loving god, or even a practical one, near impossible. So,
they abandoned the religions of their upbringings, along with all other
religions as well as any notions of spirituality.Fair enough!
As a teenager I wanted nothing more than to rebel against
them somehow…. They are lucky I didn’t run off with a doomsday cult.
Suffice it to say, having atheism presented as the only reasonable option
for structuring one’s thinking had its downside. Recently, I was participating
in a discussion with friends about matters spiritual.No surprise, most came down on the secular
side. And some were very staunchly materialistic, characterizing spirituality
as superstition or belief in the supernatural (as did my parents). And I always end up wondering if science and
spirituality completely incompatible (cue Einstein quote.) Why does
spirituality necessarily imply an anthropomorphic deity? Can’t one believe in
the divine without Sky Jesus or some such? Am I being obtuse here?
For a long time, I have thought that art always wants to
ally itself to the truth of its times. Back in the day in Europe, that
meant the Christian church. It must be interesting to live in a time when
science, religion and art are all serving the same seamless “truth”.I can barely imagine what that’s like.Is it nice?Limiting?It certainly couldn’t
work now.
Around 1500 CE, along comes a burgeoning humanism and an
increasing trend towards separation of church and state (and a separation of
the individual person from a “source”, I imagine it like a big bang-like
expanding universe, ever traveling away from the center) ...and it all seems to
make room for science. So gradually art became interested in science, or
at least allying itself with science in the name of TRUTH.This is not good news for stained glass,
which has always been “spiritual”.And
that is because… because…….because…because why? Well, I am guessing because
radiant colored light coming into an Official Sacred Space makes believers jiggy
and feels like what we might imagine divine inspiration feels like.Warm! Beautiful! Incandescent! Lucid! Ethereal!
Or something like that. Where’s the good Abbot Suger (“stained glass is
enlightenment embodied”) when you need him?
I think setting up a dichotomy between a scientific truthand a mythologic truth is to miss something important.For one thing, I really, really, REALLY don’t
want to have to pick between the two.But hey: at least in equating spirituality with the supernatural,
materialists acknowledge spirituality is both super and natural!Super-duper!
The problem for me arises when you must pick between
science and mythos for The Truth. Because any sensible person will
choose moon landings and vaccines for the win every time, including me. I very
much believe in the facts of science but is it The Truth?Consciousness being what it is, The
Truth is always going to be a human construct. As such, it’s on par with
subjective reality. (I feel really brave for saying that out loud because I can
already hear my parents screaming at me at how idiotic that is!) And yet but
still, part of me is waiting to find out reality is all in my head. Maybe I
read too much sci-fi as a kid, but as long as reality is mediated by our brains
and senses, there’s room for doubt. After all, how can one study that which is
extraneous to our own minds without employing our mediated, reality
constructing brains to do it?
One of many ginormous problems I had with Trump was the
whole “alternative facts” thing. It forced people to side with science facts or
his lies. But alternative realities are my bread and butter in the studio. I
mean, what in the heck is art if not big honking displays of alternative facts?
Especially art that derives from the imagination, like the flowers and birds in
my dome. I didn’t appreciate their sudden demotion to the irrelevancy
department. In the end I want to believe that The Truth is not knowable,
therefore the best we might manage is a reunion between subjective and
objective…or mind and body. IF. YOU. WILL.
Some of the stated intentions for the dome are underscoring
the intersection of art and science. But maybe…just maybe, part of this
project is to “attempt” a reunion of science and spiritual via art.Not that this is the only recent attempt—in
fact, I think it happens all the time. I think maybe that’s the whole project
of art all the time. But the last time we all agreed on that in Western culture
was around 1499!
In my original proposal I said this:
“Spirituality is not typically the realm of science (and
from my personal experience, it is absolutely taboo in academia in general
unless one is in a Religious Studies program). As such, I am assuming biophilic
spaces are studied from a practical and material point of view. But I think,
without getting too mystical about it, biophilic spaces offer an opportunity to
reconcile a human consciousness with an environmental context. They can
demonstrate that what appears to be a mind/body split, or a mental
classification of interior vs exterior (self vs “not-self”) is a perceptual
illusion and while it may have an important practical heuristic function, it
also ensures a sense of a sense of loneliness and enables eco disasters, etc.
Therefore, I conclude that if reuniting these seemingly separate things is not
the essence of “spirituality” then nothing is. I would say that from a
neurological or psychological perspective, this has some value.”
Fancy proposal language for: If I am gonna build a little
mini-church, it’s going to have to reference spirituality. Or, shall I say,
that aspect of consciousness that connects us to life, reconciles our mind and
body and feels meaningful and inspiring? I may not believe in anything supernatural
or any type of god, but I certainly believe things can be super and natural...sometimes
even simultaneously!
My choice to make a little church comes from the fact that
ever since I became a stained glass artist, the CHURCH THING has loomed large.
Enlightenment indeed—who doesn’t want a smidge of that in their art?Being an official atheist, I think making a
window for a religious space, be it a church, synagogue, mosque, or something
else, would be weird for me. Plus, none of those places have never asked me.
But I can relate to the idea of a space dedicated to sacred contemplation and
felt a real urge, a real big urge, actually, to make one.
One thing that differs about my dome is that stained glass
in churches is that is all about a group experience and the buildings tend to
be really large and therefore the windows are seen from a long distance.My dome will be intimate.Really intimate—maybe a wee bit
claustrophobic, even. My art, my idea of spiritual experience is that its best
one-on-one.
He collected old books—some as old at the 1700’s.I remember being struck by the beauty of
their hand-colored print illustrations.Flash forward to now.For some years
I have been really getting into botanical and various natural history prints.,
perhaps inspired by this early exposure.
I remember reading a Dover (remember them?) reprint of a
Medieval Bestiary.I bought it for the
images—but one day checked out the text.I will include some examples.
A Spicy Example
They
were unintentionally hilarious.For one
thing, it seemed that the descriptions were not based on much in the way of
observable reality. And this really got me—imagine that!! It was stunning to me
to think that they could be understood as somehow a reflection of reality. And
yet, they were. That was a first inkling that one needn’t always prioritize
observable, external reality as real. Surely the imagination is also real.
From a pernicious tendency towards anthropomorphism to an
insistence on arranging them in mise-en-scenes to flat-out-decorative
arrangements, old “science” illustrations manage to distort and manipulate
“reality” in wild and crazy ways.Even
Audubon’s work seems hyper real rather than real-real.Of course, the invention of the photograph
co-opted our understanding of the observable, and now only photos seem real to
us, which is a whole weird thing unto itself.Photos never look even remotely real to me.
Really, these old illustrations could ultimately be seen as
images of the artist’s brain, as self-portraits.Pardon me, but your subjectivity is showing. Obviously,
they lack a certain amount of what you might call scientific objectivity.I found this rather amusing until I remembered
that there was no such thing as “science” as we understand it now back then.
Which got me on a long trip wherein I reveled at the doomed
nature of attempts at “objective truth”.She scienced me with blindness, indeed.
It seemed to me that the more the artist tried to depict
something ocularly objective, the more they only managed to depict their own
conception of it.As it turns out
there’s a whole book on this which I read.I am highly recommending “Objectivity” by Lorraine Daston if this topic
intrigues you like it does me.She is a
far better person at explaining all the paradoxes and twists and turns it takes
to make a stab at objectivity.
As an artist, I refuse to choose between objective and
subjective truth.I think “spiritual
truth” could be a place where they become one.And that is how I am defining the “super/natural”. At least today I am.
