The Joy of Visiting Unlit Churches / August 6, 2020 by Sasha Ward

North wall of St Peter Everleigh. Built in 1813 in the Gothic style and on an iron frame, with monument to Francis Dugdale Astley Esq. founder and donor of this church.

My trips to churches in the past few years have been generally unplanned, I stop if I pass one that looks as if it may be open and has an easy place to park outside. I had noticed that some of the loveliest, most uncluttered ones I visited were in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust whose website is up to date with current visitor opening times - no need to book!! - so we set off to see a couple of CCT churches near us in Wiltshire.

St Peter Everleigh. Left: East window, Right: South wall of the nave.

The interior of Everleigh church contains nothing ugly apart from those unevenly spaced wall lights on the north wall (top photo). There are wall monuments from the previous church in the village between tall windows with orange borders and a greenish glow from the trees pressing against them outside.

The glass in the east window by W.T. Cleobury is full of beautifully painted detail. I particularly like the mother and child panel (below left), the gaze and the hands of the shepherds point at them from one side and the three kings from the other. The best hand painting I have noticed from a stained glass firm I had never heard of, which is a perfect example of the surprises you get when you use your eyes rather than a guide book.

Everleigh, details of the east window by W.T. Cleobury 1873.

St Mary, Chute Forest. Left: entrance porch, Right: west window by Jones and Willis 1921.

St Mary, Chute Forest, is tucked away in an overgrown churchyard, again with nothing ugly inside or out. It was designed by J.L. Pearson and built in 1875 of brick and flint. The interior, with no electric lighting that we could find, had a perfectly Victorian atmosphere and perfect conditions for stained glass viewing on a drizzly day. The WWI memorial west window is moody, nicely painted and eccentrically repaired at bottom left with gold coloured glass (above right).

Chute Forest, Left: carved reredos in front of east window by Clayton and Bell, Right: window detail.

The east window is a lovely one, made by Clayton and Bell in 1875. The background to all the little scenes showing the life of Christ is covered in a web of sgraffito flowers which looks great against the familiar patterns of brick, tile and architectural ornament. You can find the same patterns and shapes in the church itself - the example below shows a lantern in the top of the left hand window and, in front of one of the deep window recesses, a lantern that reflects the colours of the stained glass.

Chite Forest, Left: top of the left hand window, Right: lantern with stained glass reflection.

Three Squares / July 27, 2020 by Sasha Ward

The small square glass panels I’ve made over the past fortnight were designed as wall panels - you can see them hanging high up on my studio wall (below left). I wanted to try out an invisible fixing which is glued to the back centre of the panel, that part of the glass has to be opaque to hide it.

Left: studio wall with original date stamp design and two glass wall panels at the top. Right: Square One, 265mm sq.

Square One (above right) is a leaded elaboration on the date stamp painted piece I made on XXII.VI.MMXX that looked a bit pointless as a stand alone piece of glass. I added patches of colour to compliment the yellow and remind me of midsummer in the local countryside, with an all important black piece in the middle and a scrap textured with triangles to match the XXs on the yellow ground.

Square Two (below) was designed as an opposite to that geometric piece with organic, slightly out of control shapes in lush sprayed enamel colours that I rarely use all together. I sandblasted the surround and the edges of the glass so they look as if they merge into the wall. The light, bright colours and the different textures achieved by applying the glass paints in a variety of ways show up really well against a white (rather than transparent) background in both of these pieces.

Square Two: detail and full piece on the wall, 260 mm sq.

Left: ‘One Way Out’ ink drawing on plywood by Ray Ward. Right: ‘One Way Out’ glass enamels, 260 mm sq.

The third piece was a continuation of my project to turn Ray’s drawings into glass panels (see my previous posts for more examples). The drawings have been going so easily into stained glass versions, but I wanted to try one using my usual enamelling and sandblasting techniques. I intended to give the figure (above left) a solid centre to hide the fixing, but that was one of the things that didn’t really work out. I saw how unpredictable the enamel colours, used in layers, can be as my gold turned green and the hand painted streaks looked so watery that I resorted to sandblasting stripes across the whole background. The result - 6 firings later - is the panel (above right) displayed in the window not on the wall.

Left: panel before firing no. 5. Right: reverse side of finished glass panel.

Studio window / July 13, 2020 by Sasha Ward

Do you ever get sick of the sight of your own work? In my case, samples and fragments of it are sitting on shelves in my window, blocking a view of our beautiful garden. The up side is that even in the gloom of a winter afternoon (above) there were interesting coloured reflections cast on the work I was doing on the lightbox. As this piece of work was a geometric composition, I ended up with a window full of striped colour samples and a more coordinated look in the studio (below). However, I was tired of that look and resolved, as we were going into lockdown, that I would end up with a completely different window at the end of it.

I found an autumnal photo with no coloured glass on the shelves from another year when I must have needed a change (above) and one from the following spring where I had painted the shape of one of the pink leafed plants on to a sample I was doing for a house in Italy (below).

Further back in time (above) I had the shelves in the same positions and a similar mix of geometric test strips and slightly organic patterns which were sample pieces for the commissions on the go. I recognise fragments from a wall panel for St James Hospital in Leeds, a plane propellor from Pegasus House in Bristol and colour variations for windows in Liverpool and Derbyshire. I only remember one occasion when I wanted to fill all four windows with samples (below). This was the last time we held an open studio event and the samples were labelled showing which commission they were made for. (Ten years ago I thought this was a terrible picture of me, now I can only see how much younger I look.)

Which brings me to the same window today and work that does look pretty different from anything I’ve put in front of it before (below). There are two main themes; self portraits which are on the bottom shelf and which I think I’ve done enough of for now, and stained glass panels from Ray Ward’s drawings which are on the top shelf and which I’ve described in previous blog posts. These have been a welcome return to making leaded panels and this is something I hope to continue doing both to commission and for exhibition.

Mash Up Self Portraits / June 10, 2020 by Sasha Ward

Left: Self portrait aged fourteen. Right: Self portrait years later.

This is the self portrait (above left) when I was fourteen that made me want to revisit the self portrait theme. Unfortunately, none of the drawings I’ve done over the past few weeks, particularly the ones in pencil, have been anything like as good. So I decided to draw a new portrait (above right) using the 14 year old one as a template so the two drawings would fit on top of each other, and the two painted glass heads that followed would show my face in two different time periods. I didn’t labour over the glass painting too much and made a few versions before I got a pair of heads that matched up to good effect (below).

Left: Two layers of head encircled by painted scraps. Right: Self portrait two 270 x 270mm.

In the finished square panel (above right) I had fun with the leading. A lead line loops out of the side of the head to form a background and shoulders made of glass scraps from two recent samples in my favourite colour, which has always been yellow. I put the youthful head on top of the older one so the hollows and wrinkles are less prominent, making me wonder whether I should get a fringe cut again.

Left: Four self portrait drawings on top of each other. Right: First version of self portrait three

The idea for self portrait three was to paint two quick heads and then combine the best parts into one by chopping them up. I had a pile of drawings of me in the same position (leaning anxiously into the mirror) to copy from (above left) and an idea for a background of wavy lines on top of a roughly painted section. This plan (above right) didn’t really work, the piece had a sombre, anxious appearance so I decided to do some more chopping and introduce coloured scraps to enliven the piece.

Self portrait number three was supposed to be the last one, but I still had half heads left from the last two portraits. So I shoved these bits together to make another head, combining it with an old vibrant green sample for the background to make a tiny mash up portrait. It felt as if I was finding a way to make the self portrait more light hearted, getting away from the intense stare of an artist looking at herself in the mirror.

Self Portrait Lockdown Challenge / May 25, 2020 by Sasha Ward

As we went in to lockdown two months ago I had a few self motivated (as opposed to commissioned) projects I wanted to work on. One was to tackle the self portrait. The new drawings I did seemed less competent than the ones I’d done as a teenager, but still I thought I’d use one as the template for some glass painting - something I think I have got better at over the years. I worked away adding and scraping back the black iron oxide paint before putting the glass in the kiln overnight at least four evenings running. One (below left) was more painterly, the other (below right) was more scratchy and I looked horrendous in both of them - well I was recovering from illness at the time.

Glass self portraits, each approx 230mm square

However, when I put one piece on top of the other, there was an amazing transformation as someone that looked a bit like me, which neither of the pieces did on their own, emerged. I kept it in the window for a while, as I checked that I really did like it.

I also knew that I wanted to do something with these pieces and that I would ruin some quality they had in the process. The panel I made (below) was my second attempt. In the first I had tried unsuccessfully to extend the painting beyond the head shape. Here I kept the extra painting to a neat hairstyle beyond the lead line round the head on fragments of grey painted glass, similar in tone to the face. I used coloured pieces of old samples for borders, all this in 6mm glass to match the thickness of the double head.

This self portrait only works from the front, with the scratchily painted glass on top. Viewed from the back (below right) with the more painterly glass portrait on top, the illusion that it looks a bit like me disappears and one eye dominates. Difficult, unsettling and surprisingly nerve-racking to make public, the glass self portrait is something I’ll continue doing.

Left: Head surrounded by (high heart) lead Right: Head viewed from the back