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Visual Fodder

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brick wall

Coming up with ideas for stained glass panel designs is perhaps the most fun part of the whole creative process. Someone asked me once about how I get my ideas. I told him that they just kind of evolve. I just wait, and they show up.

That’s not entirely true. I don’t just sit around waiting for an epiphany. I’d be waiting a very long time if that were the case. What I really do is feed my imagination.

I take walks in nature. I take walks in urbania. (I know, urbania’s not a real word, but it should be, don’t you think? Like, inclusive of cities, suburbs, towns, strip malls… Maybe there’s already a word for that. I’ll give Merriam Webster a call someday to find out.)

I take photographs everywhere I go. Well, not everywhere. That would just be creepy. But by consciously looking for photo subjects, I am training myself to notice things that might otherwise be overlooked.  Basically I’m gathering images to study and play with and ruminate over.

And then all that visual fodder begins to shift and sift and coalesce into an image that can be translated into glass. Not to make this sound all ethereal and pretentious (or like a cow chewing its cud… “ruminate?” “fodder?”)

Sometimes the “image” is as simple as a brick-like pattern.

path

path pattern

Sometimes it’s as silly as “Three Penguins on Ice.”

ice

penguins

Maybe someday I will experience an epiphany. But until that day arrives, I will continue to feed my imagination. There’s not much worse than a starving imagination.

Where do you find your ideas?

Shadowed: Weekly Photo Challenge

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The theme of today’s photo challenge, as offered weekly at The Daily Post, is “Shadowed.” The premise is that, “Experimenting with shadows can be a fun and rewarding way to push yourself to try something new with your camera and your surroundings, and look beyond the obvious shot.”

So today I’m posting some “shadow” photos that I’ve taken recently.

But what I think would be really fun and rewarding would be to experiment with using shadow as a main element in a stained glass panel. Note to self: add that to the queue of design ideas to play with.

Chulesshadow

“The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.”

Leonardo da Vinci

IMG_0439

“Without black, no color has any depth. But if you mix black with everything, suddenly there’s shadow – no, not just shadow, but fullness. You’ve got to be willing to mix black into your palette if you want to create something that’s real.”

Amy Grant

IMG_0064

“Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.”

Paul Cezanne

Shadowed

Manifesting through Stained Glass

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NOTE: This post was the first written for my now defunct blog Glass Manifestations. I have since folded many of the Glass posts into my What Rhymes with Stanza blog.

Manifest —

3. verb (transitive) to show plainly; reveal or display

  1. to prove; put beyond doubt or question

Creating stained glass panels is a very personal process for me. From the inspiration, to the design, selection of colors and textures, and then to the actual crafting of the piece. Sure, I like to sell my work and keep my cupboard stocked with food and my studio stocked with glass.

But what mostly matters to me is the process. The quest for ideas and inspiration and the way they “manifest” out of the seemingly mundane fabric of my simple life. The challenge of translating those ideas into a dynamic two-dimensional design. The sensory pleasure of looking at material options, feeling the heft of the sheets of glass, holding them up to the window to study the interplay of color and light, tracing my fingers (carefully!) across the surface to gauge how the texture will contribute to the overall design. And then the careful application of age old techniques to craft the materials into a final cohesive piece of art.

And finally, the moment of truth, when I lift the completed panel off the work table, move it to a window to let the sunlight filter through, step back and experience how my original inspiration has morphed into a tangible representation constructed with glass and lead.

I gain a lot of insight during the process of creating a panel, and again whenever I contemplate the finished piece.

Glass Manifestations [My original blog site was] about glass (sort of) because working with glass is how I do a lot of my processing (thoughts, feelings, ideas, inspirations…), and hence a lot of my thoughts, feelings and ideas are made manifest in my art. But it’s also about insight and growth, in the hope that what I manifest tomorrow, or next week or next year – in life as well as in glass – will continue to improve. In quality, in meaningfulness, and in pure, simple pleasure.