Painting on glass is one of my favorite things to do. Unfortunately, for this church, this was not a repair they are excited about.Blessed Savior Lutheran is a small country church in Blissfield, Michigan. There is a small, but very friendly, group of people who attend church there.
In 2004, I was asked to repair/restore most of the windows in their church. They purchased the building and it had been sitting empty for quite a while. Vandals had their way with a lot of the windows. Some of them were completely releaded, some were repainted, and some of them were ok the way they were. We got them removed, repaired and reinstalled and they looked wonderful for about five years.
Recently, vandals were at it again. To the left are 3 pieces that were cracked in the process. You can see where they belong in the full size picture towards the bottom of the window. I will be painting these in two separate firings before reinstalling them into the panels. Somebody deliberately broke through the plexiglass with a brick before going back and throwing a rock through the hole they created. As much as I enjoy working with glass, this is not the way I like to get new projects. My hope is that people will look out for suspicious characters and report them. This is a large cost for a small church to bear.
This is the painted glass after it has come out of the kiln for the first time. The heavy black outlines and the veins of the leaves were painted in with Tracing Black 401 from Reusche with a little zinc added to dull it down a little. This helps it match the existing glass paint which has lost some of it's shine. More photos to come after the next step comes out of the kiln.Pat Deere
Links: Interested in glass restoration for your church? Click here.
or Glass Painting Classes? Click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment