Chaos out of Order

I found an old piece of work based on a drawing of a hut by a lake in the hills that gave me an idea for a new piece of work. The idea was to turn the picture into a sequence by repeating the shapes of road, hut, lake and hills and changing them slightly in each version. The sequence I followed to get to the final piece is described below - starting with stage one where I cut nine pieces of glass, some coloured, some flashed and some painted, into squares and sandblasted them with the basic design (below left). Stage two involved adding colour (below right), which never turns out quite how I imagine.

Stage one: Nine 90mm squares of glass, sandblasted. Stage two: First layer of painting.

It was at this point that I realised I’d made things too simple and too twee. So I dropped the squares down to add another colour between them (below left). This led me to join up the white paths and the black blobs (which were originally the lakes) to create a more disorderly pattern. The huts had served their purpose as pattern makers so they had to go (below right).

Stage three: Strips of coloured glass added. Stage four: Sandblasting & painting to link pieces together.

After more painting and sandblasting to disguise the remnants of the huts, I thought the colours looked OK together and leaded up the piece (below left). Then I left it a while, knowing it wasn’t quite right. I liked the columns but not the rows, so I spaced a photograph of the panel out in photoshop and got rid of the cramped up look (below right). Then I ripped up the leading before I could change my mind and came up with a new plan.

Stage six: Leaded panel after more sandblasting & painting. Stage seven: Moving the columns apart.

The new plan followed a pattern that I worked out on paper first. I added borders to give more space to the design, especially the blobby blacks which had been designed to cover the lead joints. I added horizontal colour strips between the columns which link visually to the geometry of the horizontal lead lines, with the white paths meandering across all the glass pieces. Another layer of sandblasting and painting meant that I changed some of the colour combinations I wasn’t happy with, before I leaded up the panel for the final time (below left). The sun projected version of the panel emphasised the blobby contrasted with the stripey that I was after (below right).

Stage ten: Panel with borders added.

You can see the aspects of the panel that I like best below - sunlight through different types of glass and glass painting, and subtle colour combinations that flow across the lead lines.

Left: Sunlight through the panel. Right: Detail shown on light box.

The Colours of Compton Verney

Lothar Götz room in "The Art of Perception"

The last gallery in the excellent exhibition at Compton Verney The Art of Perception contains a mural by Lothar Götz. I couldn't resist taking some photos (above), although they look like everyone else's photos of the room, that is simple and effective. The colour combinations however are not simple, and they remind me a lot of the restored eighteenth century glass in the newly restored Compton Verney Chapel, the colours in the middle one of the three (top window, below) match the mural particularly well. 

Three restored C18th stained glass window tops in the north side of the Chapel

Inside the chapel, and one of the windows on the south side

The chapel, built between 1776 and 1780, is a rare example of a place of worship designed by Capability Brown. The beautiful white interior has been restored, and the windows replaced with leaded lights containing hand-made glass, most of it clear as much of the medieval glass fragments that the original windows contained had been sold off in the 1920s. What remains of the eighteenth century glazing are the three window tops on the north side in the glaring colours you see in stained glass from this period.

Stained glass in the north windows of the Chapel

I love these type of windows, with complicated decorative patterns and bits of detailed painting, where geometry clashes with nature. The link I have made to my own work goes right back to 1995, and a series of small windows made during a residency in Bournemouth and Poole (below). It's not only the loops, but also the pink/blue/orange combination and the thrill of putting clashing patterns and details up against each other.

My windows for Sea View Centre, Poole & Forest View Centre, Bournemouth made in 1995