I am proud to say I'm in the the Stained Glass Quarterly the stained glass magazine of record. It's been a long road there but it's nice to be in print.

I'm finally getting around to up loading more of the work I finished for the show. The opening was on Saturday and I had a rollicking good time. All my people in one place at one time can be a bit overwhelming for the gallery but it makes me happy. Thanks to everyone who came out to the opening, there was just way to much cheese there to finish by myself.

Now it's time to start painting for the next show!

The White Angel

26" x 6"





The white oak ( thus the white in its title, clever aren't I ) is left over from a Chapel entry way I made for a Catholic High School. No good scrap goes wasted in my shop!

Oh yeah, god bless dance troupes that preform in the nude and will let you photograph them for reference. Man does it make my life easier.

One week and counting till my show. I'm painting like my life depends on it.



My most recent submission.

So I've got a show coming up, and typical to my station in life I'm up to my ears with so much work that I can't seem to complete anything. This is a painted version of a block print that I cut late last year. Its larger than most of my paintings but I really wanted to get the portrait right. Finishing this piece felt like act of sheer will. Yeah right, now I need ten more just like it in the next four weeks.





Hope ya dig it.

Bryan

Damn, I was starting to think that I would never push paint on one of my own pieces again. I've got a show in October so as of now sheer terror is my copilot.
Nothing motivates a body like the thought of having your patrons ask "What, nothing new?"

So here it is one from the night shift;




A detail.

The black walnut from which I made the frame with came from my boss' back yard.

I sure hope he doesn't figure out that I'm the one who cut down his tree.

Week 6

It ain't over till we say it's over!

It was installation day. Neil and I started the drive out to the site in the loaded truck. The rear view mirror wasn't quite adjusted right so I leaned out the window and gave it a good push. Over tightened as it was, the mirror cracked into three pieces with a loud snap. Neil looked at me and said " That better be the only piece of glass you break today."

It took me two days to repaint the head of John the Baptist. It of course took me no where near that much time originally but now I was trying to rectify all the things I felt were weak in the first version only to discover upon completing the painting process that I had simply exchanged those weaknesses for new ones. I must of done something right with the first head because three of my coworkers asked me if they could have it. "Some stripper name of Salami's got dibs on it." is the stock smart ass answer.

I use it all three times.


The second John

I wasn't angry that the head got broke. In Rita's words "It's glass, it breaks." sometimes you just gotta let it go. I did feel bad for Josh, he apologized several times a day until the window was installed. "Don't beat yourself up" I say, "That's my job."


All glazed and ready for it's close up

Once the window was completed Neil photographed the individual sections in a camera easel. We've learned the hard way that you can't always get a decent shot once the window is installed so we shoot the window in sections and then assemble the separate photos in the computer.


Detail, not photographed by Neil

Neil figured this out with trial and error over several years and has gotten really good at shooting stained glass. Neil's work blows away almost everything I see published. I say this because we periodically find his pictures on other peoples sites (and in a book) with out an attribution. I guess if your gonna steal, steal from the best.

We load up all the tools and the windows. Mike and Simon are going along as well to install a rose window we just completed for another part of the church. These are the last two windows of what has been a very substantial job. We adapted a huge altar window, two transept windows and 12 chapel windows for St. Mary Magdalene not to mention our new rose, a sandblasted rosette and the above mentioned baptism window. After more than a year this job was was almost over.

Neil rarely gets out of the studio, he's made the mistake of making himself indispensable. This may of been my window but is sure as heck was Neil's job so he got sprung for the day. So Mike starts busting his stones, "Hey when we finish installing this rose window we'll give you hand with your little, easy to get to window."

If you've ever been on a job site the week before deadline then you truly understand the meaning of chaos. This site was in no way the worst I've ever seen but we sure weren't working in there alone. Neil and I dropped into the rhythm of the site right away and blasted through the installation.


Yes, a typical installation finds me on my knees for a number of reasons

After we finished Neil crossed the Church to kindly offer Mike and Simon help finishing their window. "What, you guys aren't done yet?"

Everyone in the shop liked the window, but me being me I was still ruminating over the areas of the window that I just didn't get right. Father Chieffo came in to see the window installed and looked at it quizzically," Is that the old window?"

At this moment I am more proud than I have ever been in my entire career.


The finish line

I've really got no business putting my window up next to the Zettler, in the 22 years I've worked in this trade I've spent more time on scaffolding with chop out tools or writing bids than I have painting. The anonymous author of this window most likely painted everyday and well earned his skill.

That and my admiration.


The original Zettler at Saint Al's


My well meaning knock off


Next!

Week 5

Night of the lead knifes

The problem with using ruby rouge glass enamel as a flesh tone is that the line between rosy and umpa lumpa is a thin one indeed.

Getting flesh tone correct has been one of out biggest headaches. The Germans used an enamel that you just can’t seem to buy any more. I asked our paint supplier about this and he thought this may be because the government banned some of the chemicals that were used in the old paint recipes.
"It was doing something bad to pregnant ladies, I think."
"Like providing them with liquor and cigarettes or being insensitive to aching feet and bursting bladders?" I queried.
"...What?"

The flesh tone enamels and silver stains are applied to the back of the glass. They fire at a lower temperature and don’t mix well with fired paint so on the back they go.

We’ve been experimenting with different combination of enamels for years, and I still get nervous when I do an application. The enamel we use most often as a base can be really difficult to control. It can fire as a pleasant rosy red brown or as a disturbing garish orange depending on it’s density, kiln temp or position of the Moon.

I laid down the flesh tones on Christ and John on Friday and called my boss Joe over to double check my work. The enamels change so dramatically in the kiln that this is the one painting task that is straight up zen. The more you try to think it out the more likely you are to give your subject a "bottled tan" complexion.


Unfired enamels, O.K so they look a evil, they’ll get over it

Joe gave them a good look over and gave me a go to fire them. I got a rush as realized this was my last chance to screw these pieces up in the painting process. When I got in on the weekend to do some overtime I went straight to the kiln.

I pulled the heads and walked them over to the easel without looking at them. Then stood back and unclenched my jaw for the first time since I fired the kiln on Friday.

Holy cow, it worked.

Silver stain is a silver nitrate that when applied to glass and fired in a kiln takes on luminescent shades of amber. Unlike the enamels we use for the flesh I get on real good with the silver stain.

I knocked out the silver stain brocade in the robes of Christ in one very long weekend. The over time left me with three of the major sections to glaze on Monday. Yeah Buddy!


Silver stain, my preferred dance partner




First of the big sections glazed

I released some of the smaller sections to glaze last week and they were finished up quickly, so I was feeling pretty good about the main sections of the window. I gang pressed everyone not on site or on deadline to glaze for me. Jason and Josh got to glazing the sections I finished off over the weekend and Thomas now with out waxing or firing to keep him occupied was soon saddled with glazing. Oh yes, Melissa too, the second she fired the last of the canopy, it was straight to the glazing bench!


First Section glazed


Josh glazing the first section, "Dude this is a small section get a picture of me glazing a big section."


O.K., Josh glazing a big section

Me? I blew the dust off my lead knife and reasserted my alpa dog status as speed glazer.

The windows are assembled on a glazing drawing made during the patterning process. All of the pieces of glass in a stained glass window are held in place with a matrix of lead came, soldered at each intersection. The lead comes in 5’ long strands that if viewed on end look like and "H". We cut the pieces of lead with a lead knife, a saracen blade with a wood handle and cast lead end. The lead end allows us to drive horse shoe nails into the bench top that hold the glass and lead in place as we build. When the whole section is leaded out we solder every lead intersection front and back.

This is glazing.


Thomas and his lead knife a blazin’


Sara’s tools


Melissa, a girl and her soldering iron.

The last two steps in the process of building a window section are to cement it with glazing compound and solder zinc coated steel flat reinforcement bars to the section.

We were ahead of schedule enough that I able to take a vacation day to chaperone an art museum visit with my son’s preschool class. It was good to get out of the shop and regroup, the morning was a blast.

When I got home my wife told me that Neil had left a message to call him at work. When I called in Rita answered.

" Your in tomorrow right?"

"Of course, What’s up?" I asked.

"John the Baptist’s head broke, your going to have to paint another."

" Ahhhh fer the ( insert litany of obscenities here )!"


"Bring me the head of John the Baptist!"

Week 4

Rita the co owner and studio grammairin checks in on me on tuesday. We’ve had a crew on site at Mary Magdelen installing windows we’ve completed thus far in the Church. Rita sent the monthly billing out with the crew in the morning and they came back with a check.
"Wow, that never happens." I said.
Rita continues "Yep, we like this Church. We got invited to the dedication, the Cardinal is going to be there."
"I’ll be sure to wear my good coveralls."
"This window will be done for them... right?"

"Ahhhhh... Yeah, you betcha."


One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is the materials that I get to work with. The core of any window design is the stained glass. Glass, though a solid still retains some of the visual characteristics of a liquid and can have some incredible transitions in color and density. We use these variations in a sheet of glass to help create the illusion of space in a composition.

The two most commonly used types of stained glass are cathedral and antique. Though both have a wide range of color, cathedral glass is machine made and very consistent through the entire sheet. Borrrrrring.

Antique glass is created by a glass blower with a blow pipe. Craftsmen blow out a cylinder, when it cools the ends are cut off and the cylinder is split down the middle. The split cylinder then goes into a kiln and is heated to a temperature that allows the cylinder to lay down flat. I’m probably not doing the process justice, check Lamberts site out for a better telling of the tale. Lamberts Stained Glass
We use antique glass almost exclusively, it’s lush, vibrant and it cuts like butter.


Yummmmmm. You don’t need to make art from this glass, it is art

There is a category of antique glass called flashed. This type of glass is blown with a thin veneer of one color over the thicker body of a clear or different color glass. This single sheet of glass with two colors provided an excellent opportunity for some visual trickery.

The angel in this composition holding a red robe with a gold brocade is a perfect example of this. The two tone effect is created by etching away the veneer of red from pieces of red on clear flashed glass. The gold coloring is then created with silver stain. As for the etching, that happens with hydrofluoric acid.


The angel with etched red flash

Every old timer in this business has a story about how lax they used to be about handling acid. They also usually have a story about someone getting burned with acid. I’m crazed about how this stuff gets handled in the shop and I nag my crew to no end on the subject. When suited up in the safety gear they look more like they are headed into a bio-weapons site than to acid etch glass.

Thomas, who has been tasked to me for the duration of this job, got to play space man in the etching tank for this one. First he masked off the veneered side of the glass with clear contact paper and then he used an exacto knife to cut out the pattern of the brocade in the contact paper. The exposed areas are then covered with an acid solution. The etching process can take several hours, depending on the glass. The amount of time it takes to go nuts doing this while wearing respirator is a lot less.

I’ve been painting like monkey on meth all week. O.K. bad analogy. But trust me I’ve been pushing paint as fast as humanly possible.


First matt finished

I finished the matt and hustled the window sections through the kiln. Poor Thomas waxed, fired and waxed some more. All the glass went into the easel again for another coat of paint. This layer is to deepen the shadows and darken the tracing where necessary. This last application of paint is done with lavender oil. It makes the glass paint handle more like oil paint. It also makes the shop smell like a burning perfume factory when fired in the kiln. When I got home from work the first day I used the lavender oil my wife gave me a quizzical look and said "Why on earth do you smell like a bed and bath boutique?"


Oil matt / aroma therapy ready for the kiln


Two kilns, firing fast as we can load ’em

I spent some time with a calendar on Thursday calculating the time to work ratio until the deadline.

"Yowsa, I might just make it."

Of course just letting the thought escape will most assuredly doom this project to tardyness.

Week 3


"Hey Bryan, the kiln is making a funny noise, do you hear it?" Melissa asked. I leaned over the recently fired kiln and heard a soft hiss.
"Oh!" I quickly valved off the propane bottle. The feed line to the kiln had developed a leak. One more distraction, this is not a good thing.

Once I had finished the tracing on all the window sections Neil and Thomas waxed the window up . Waxing is a method of temporarly affixing the stained glass pieces to a sheet of 1/4" plate glass with bee’s wax. We melt the wax in an old pot and then use an eye dropper to shoot a drop of wax into the intersections between the individual pieces of glass. The window can then be painted up, in an easel and in proper daylight.


Waxing up a section.


Thomas and his tedium.

Thomas had never waxed a window up before so I held my breath as Joe (the big boss) and I lifted the first sheet plate glass into the easel. There is always a "popping" sound when you lift a waxed window for the first time. So long as that popping sound is not followed by the soul killing crash of a hundred pieces carefully cut glass falling onto the cement floor your in good shape.

The first move after the window is in the easel is coat each piece of glass with paint. This coating of paint is called the matt. I’m using Ancient Brown Drakenfeld, it has in incredible violet cast when not backlit and holds it’s density after firing. Glass paints can lose some of their density when fired, some paints more so than others. This can get tricky when you are repainting a missing or broken piece from an existing window and trying to match it’s paint.


The blackout.

I’ve got a high falutin’ badger brush that I use to even out the paint while it’s still wet and put a stipple texture in it’s surface. The stipple texture will allow me to brush out the paint in a way that leaves a pattern similar to a halftone. The crazy thing about matting is that it’s a reductive painting method, you black out the piece of glass and then with a dry brush pull out the mid-tones than the highlights.


Almost finished brush out.

If you screw up and take paint out of an area you didn’t want to you can rewet the matt and start over. It can be easy to lose your tracing under a heavy matt. One of the other things that can go wrong is that a water matt can sometimes take up an oil tracing, it’s not usually a big deal because you can retrace the lost line over the matt. I had spent the better part of a day tracing the brocade on Christ’s robes, only to watch it disappear in the wet matt.


As a matter of fact this is the brocade that became invisible.

Frustrated is probably a good word to use here. Not the leaves, or the clouds or the easy stuff to freehand, but the brocade.

Frustrated indeed.


Your humble narrator.

The anatomy of painting on stained glass is as follows: the color is in the glass and line and shadow is defined by paint usually brown or black. The line work is referred to as the tracing and the shading is termed matting. There are a staggering number of variations of Brown and Black.

None of which are ever quit right when trying to match paint color of an existing window.

Because this window is a line for line copy I quite literally trace all the line work. I lay the printout on the light table and put each piece of glass over it’s printed image and paint what is there. This is a luxury I am almost never afforded, usually I’m working off a enlargement of a watercolor painting that has only the most general information to guide me. On this project my guidance is humbling. I’ve been doing this long enough to call myself a good painter, but next to the hand that created this window originally I suck like an Electrolux.


Tracing over the printout

The trick in tracing is to find the calligraphy of each line, the last thing I want is for this to look traced from something even though that is exactly what I’ve done.


Finished tracing.

The paint we use is very much like ceramic glaze, it is made up of ground glass, flux and a mineral or metal oxide pigment. Metal oxide = rust. After decades of blasting buffing and sanding rust off motorcycle parts the irony of my need for this corrupted metal is rich indeed.
The paint can be scratched or brushed off until it has been fired in kiln. When fired, the paint fuses to the surface of the glass and becomes as permanent as anything in this life.

We get the paint in a powered form that can be mixed with any number of mediums. I’m using Venice turpentine, an oil medium that will allow me to brush a water matt over the tracing without disturbing it.

The original window has a greenish tint to the line work, so I’m using a paint called matting grey green that has a similar hew. I will be matting the glass in Ancient Brown Drakenfeld. Boy, is that arcane information or what.


Paint color I need to match.


Traced section down and waxed to plate glass.


Close up.

The last week has been spent hunched over the light table. Tony has been painting a window I designed at the next light table. I torture him with NPR but his smart ass rejoinders to the radio entertain the heck out me and thus ensures that the talk and news shows will continue. News of Eliot Spitzer’s political implosion dominates every show. Tony notices that most of the women commentators focus on why he had the affair. Most of the male commentator focus how he got caught.

Melissa finishes the inscription she’s been working on for the last two weeks and I immediately shanghai her to paint the canopy (the architectural gingerbread that surrounds gothic designs) of my window.

I’ve managed to get almost the entire window traced by Friday. My bosses relief is palpable even though theoretically we still do not have enough time to complete this window and install it.


Dove section laid out.

Hell, I’m not even to the hard part yet.


My splitting headache.