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 In 2024, this
religious gift stained glass panel was given to a retiring pastor
in Tucson, Arizona, by his congregation.
These nice people contacted me with the
idea of showing some of his ministries in a stained glass gift. I came
up with this alternative idea because [1] depicting some of his
ministries would mean leaving out even more of his good works and [2]
showing humans doing activities in stained glass is not always
100% successful. On the church's web
site, I
found the photo (below) of him in front of a very iconic cross mounted
in their main sanctuary. Photos of the church showed that it had very
distinctive architecture, so I requested that they send me
several photos of the church
building from specific angles. From these, I selected one that I
thought would be even more
meaningful to the pastor who would receive this gift, and when I showed
them a drawing, they agreed.
The center of this artwork is copper foiled and the border is leaded.
Combining these two construction methods is not something I do very
often, and requires great skill in planning and measuring the artwork.
The detail inside the cross is a large overlay, which I made by [1]
drawing it on top of the photo of the cross, [2] gluing the paper
drawing to pieces of zinc so I could cut them out with a "tin snips" (a
tool meant for cutting sheet metal), [3] soldering the zinc pieces
together and filing the edges to make them smooth, [4] covering the
whole overlay with solder so that it would patina the
same charcoal gray as the rest of the artwork, and [5] trimming
the overlay to size and soldering it in place over the stained glass.
This artwork is mounted in an oak frame that I had purchased many years
before. The round top seemed to complement the religious nature of the
artwork. The oak frame does not show up well in this photo.
They told me later that the pastor was thrilled with this retirement stained glass gift.
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