The Project _ A few steps up the ladder

                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                           

First and foremost, many thanks to all who took part in the writing of the Grant for the Arts Application, our sponsor Lamberts Glas and all contributors in kind for their ongoing generosity until completion of the artwork. Many thanks to the Shrewsbury Museum for their invitation to create this artwork and their contribution in hosting or promoting events.


What have I been up to?

Before I got a few steps up the ladder for the full scale cartoon pinned on the largest drawing board of my studio, I wrote the project for real, all like a story telling addressed to unknown readers!

Previous posts of this blog were giving a foretaste of the project. I started a full size drawing to layout all the main lines or structures of lead in the philosophy of the artwork before we knew if the Grant Application would be a success.


Then, I had no doubt this project got its skeleton built and all jointed. It became obvious I was wishing to 'keep realist'.

No under-realism, hyper-realism, sur-realism...

The sculptural meaning of this work is very true, it is a social sculpture and commitment for many visitors each day of years to come in the Shrewsbury Museum.

Like the sundial sitting on the wall of the painting, days and shades are telling me how I am doing with the time scale of being and becoming.


I have chosen to fuse glass cuts, all recycled in the spirit of geological movement or bonding, fossilising.
Thinking of Margaret Rope's birds, with a day to day view from my window, I gathered in a section of the first cartoon all the birds that paused on the same tree I photographed through seasons.
Two local schools and young adults will contribute to the design or the making. They will have their say in the story told in a view on some mysterious inhabited corner of a town alike the painting I selected out of the Shrewsbury Museum collections Formal Garden in Dogpole. A chance for them, in the discussions we will hold, to record how they perceived their present and future given or handed out to them.


So, hopefully, more or less fortnightly I will spend many hours writing the stories to make this project loved; people intrigued will look forward to witnessing its progress and growth of its making.
Beuysterous is one of the motivation for building this artwork with reference to trees or environment and the passion of my 20s for the artist Joseph Beuys.



The wording of the grant application was :

"The idea of this project is to draw on current Museum exhibition Heavenly Lights and develop further key themes and influences of me as artist (especially ‘social sculpture’), via the medium of stained glass, to encourage thinking of the Earth and its ethical and spiritual challenges, to capture a public synthesis of past/modern/future environmental quests (like Margaret Rope’s journey from Fine Arts, the social statements of the Arts & Crafts movement to the choice of a monastic life) and explore how these have, do, and will continue to influence our world.
By creating a memory of this process through “keep realist” visuals created by workshop participants and entered into the final permanent artwork, and making a film of the process from concept to installation, we aim to capture a shared contemplation of past, present and future and how ideas, choices and actions influence our world. We aim to promote a wider contemplation and appreciation of historical and contemporary stained glass working.
Through talks, tours and demonstrations, we will instill a deeper understanding of the history, themes and processes of stained glass & links between this contemporary piece and the work of Margaret Rope."


Like a very special offer, it includes three workshops

1_Cartoon & stained glass painting

Teens and adults x 12. Visit to museum & workshop in the artist’s studio. They will learn traditional glass painting techniques, create ‘keep realist’ visuals to be placed in the final artwork.

2_A Touch of Glass

Children aged 5 - 6 years x 20 in two groups. Visit to the exhibition, a workshop as intro to stained glass

3_ Mini Apprenticeship

Adults aged 17+ yrs x 6, drawn from harder to reach groups. Visit to the exhibition, interactive presentation of contemporary stained glass, studio visit.
1 full day per week x 3 weeks in studio: intro to glass cutting/leading, building their own small panel, and contributing to the final artwork.


and a guest artist!

KATIE ECCLESTON BOKOR

Katie has made a short 5-10 min film that runs alongside the Margaret Rope exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum. This film include previous footage of the main artist working on a commission in 2015 as well as recent filming of current projects. This provides an insightful look at the process of stained glass creation.

Katie will be creating a 1 hour long film, capturing the main artist’s story of creation through the design process, workshop activities, talks, tours and demonstrations, and the making of the stained glass artwork itself. This film will be submitted to the FIFMA International film festival.

Welcome to Couleurlive Studio from KAE Films on Vimeo.

Feathered Regulars

                     

updated
Fri. 3 Feb. 2017






I found the same week the latest Margaret Rope of Shrewsbury _ Stained Glass Artist of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Arthur Rope, as well as Women Stained Glass Artists of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Peter Cormack published 30 years ago for an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery.

Eagle

After more research on web pages, I noticed, that Marga and her cousin Tor have a wild life bestiary  no other stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement seems to have had. I will say I do not have the knowledge of all artwork of this movement and leave this observation I do open to critics.

Marga's windows have birds as the regulars of her house! She does not seem to use it as Christian Symbolism only. In her window for her nephew and niece I study bellow, the black bird, the owl, the woodpecker do not seem to present as baddies ( for an example, in this web page listing birds and their symbolism , "The blackbird represents the darkness of sin (black feathers) and the temptations of the flesh (its beautiful song). Once, while Saint Benedict was praying, the devil tried to distract him, appearing as a blackbird. St. Benedict, however, was not fooled, and sent him on his way with the Sign of the Cross.")
The black contre-jour of medium size birds just above horizons or behind figures ( St Peter and St Paul in Newport, Shropshire), a few flights of white doves or flocks of other birds may have meaning I am not aware of (visitation window in Shrewsbury Cathedral).

contre-jour

flights of birds Visitation window Shrewsbury Cathedral
tail's end black_common gull,  ochre wings_song thrush

just one contra-jour before branches 

Today as I am writing this post, I also took a photo of the contra-jour of a dove 

Earlier this year, I spotted a mockingbird in her Visitation Window in Shrewsbury Cathedral.

mockingbird

From that day I read all her windows searching for birds or wildlife.
I wanted to identify the wildlife she painted in her windows to open later choices for the workshop or design of our window for Shrewsbury Museum.

After my reading of the books mentioned above, I believe that her cousin took much inspiration or shared much of Marga's interest in painting animals of Great-Britain's fauna or wildlife of other countries in the artwork.
I will first keep updating this post for sharing  the birds I identified in her windows.





In one of Marga's earliest works entitled Goblin Market (inspired by a poem by Christina Rossetti)
an Australian Grass Parokeet stands in the left top corner as well as a blue tit hides in the leafy twigs.

Australian Grass Parokeet

Blue Tit

       

The most dazzling of her birds statements is in The Benedicte window
Church of Our Lady, Llandovery, Carmarthenshire

Given in memory of Herbert and Teresa Vaughan, the nephew and niece of the artist, both of whom died in childhood and are depicted in the window. Had she have times of study of birds with her nephew and niece? 

       

In Marga's artwork a bird story kept building parallel to all other themes she worked at.

In St Winefrede's window, Newport, the birds have truly a meaning in the landscape. A dipper by the well, a lesser redpoll in the woody leafy background, a kingfisher appearing by her arm in its flight which is an other bird of waters or a solitary bird.

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More of her artwork to study maybe in the near future, considering her windows have many feathered regulars.

turtle doves

House sparrows?

turtle doves with a dunnock or a small tree finch (Geospiza Parvulus)?  

short-toed lark

in Lanark, St Mary's, Scotland, the Pelican,
"symbol of Christ feeding its young with its own blood"

A short note:
As my windows will refer to collections of Shrewsbury Museum, Charles Darwin's work being of the collections, I wish even more wish to read a little bit about the Finches of the Galapagos and more than anything else his study of doves/pigeons.  http://darwinspigeons.com/#/victorian-pigeon-poems/4535732923. ( I photographed many doves in the birch tree I have sketched for the Marga & Collections artwork )