Weaving Windows

After nearly twenty years of working in architectural glass, I've learned to deal with many types of questions. But when I'm asked what a particular piece is about, there is no simple answer. Any explanation I give will have to go well beyond the themes of the work and the images it may contain, and even then, it will not be the whole story.

With each new design, I see myself as weaving together many threads - artistic, social, architectural, historical and personal - into something that ideally transcends them all. The task is complex, but I believe that people respond to art that recognizes and respects the many facets of human experience. This is particularly true when dealing with the powerful and complex subject of death.

This was brought home to us when our studio was commissioned to create fourteen windows for a new mausoleum at Prospect Cemetery last year. As I began working on the designs for this large scale project, I felt a profound sense of responsibility. Whatever preconceptions I'd had about the needs and the state of mind of visitors to a mausoleum were quickly dispelled when my assistant, John, and I went on our first site visit to measure up. At one of the crypts, a birthday card was taped next to the photo of a particularly handsome man with an engaging smile. The childish print on the card read, "Happy Birthday Papa. I hope everything is fine in Heaven. Say hello to Princess for me."

Behind the sorrow in this card, there was a faith that almost brought us to tears; and through this, we came to a much deeper understanding of the role of the mausoleum in the emotional and spiritual lives of its visitors.

For many people, their first visits to the mausoleum will be associated with the most difficult time in their lives. Over time, this may change, until the mausoleum becomes a place of remembrance and affection. In designing the windows for Prospect, I wondered what story they could tell that wouldn't be overly sentimental, and that would communicate with visitors at every stage of grief, mourning and acceptance.

The answer came in the form of a ritual that most of the predominantly Portuguese and Italian visitors to this place would be familiar with - the Stations of the Cross. This is a series of meditations based on specific events in the Passion of Christ. It has its origins in the pilgrimages to the Holy Land during the Middle Ages. In Jerusalem, the pilgrims would walk the Via Dolorosa (the Way of the Cross), from the place where Jesus was condemned, to the Hill of Golgotha where He was crucified and buried in a nearby sepulchre. Along the way, they would stop to meditate and pray at significant places in Christ's journey.

For those who could not make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the churches in Europe erected "Stations" upon which parishioners could meditate on the last hours of Jesus's life and Passion. Today, the Stations of the Cross appear throughout the world, and they continue to offer a powerful spiritual focus.

The Stations traditionally take the form of relief works containing a wooden cross, and usually, figures. In the ritual devotion accompanying the Stations, worshippers go from station to station, touching and saying a prayer at each one. While not a church setting, the mausoleum is a fitting place for this spiritual exercise, whose familiarity can help people as they move through grief into acceptance and hope.

The Stations of the Cross have a personal significance for me. After completing my studies in Wales and England, I lived in Jerusalem for several months, and many of my walks took me along Via Dolorosa. The strong sense of mystery I felt there, and the ancient arches and buildings along the way created a deeply felt impression.

On my return to North America, I saw some examples of the Stations in the churches I was working in, but often they were conventional or too sentimental. It was painter Barnnet Newman's abstract and very powerful Stations of the Cross that first captured for me some of the sense of mystery I'd felt in Jerusalem. These paintings gave me a renewed interest in artistic representations of the Stations, and I began to find other examples of innovative interpretations. One friend described the Stations he had seen in Czechoslovakia, made up of massive sculpted hands in different attitudes emerging from the solid wall of a church. An architect told me of seeing a church in Italy which had small bronze statues inset into plain windows. With this commission, I welcomed the chance to work with the rich and evocative themes this subject provides.

As I designed, the different threads began to fall into place. The historic element was there - well grounded in the strong traditions and the more recent artistic realizations of the subject. The personal was there as well, with my experiences and images of Via Dolorosa.

The social aspect was strong, tied as it was to the common cultural and religious link provided by the Stations in that community. Recognizing the importance of touch in this devotion, I decided to incorporate a sculptural element into each window. In all of the fourteen windows, a stained glass landscape frames a bas relief formed of cold bronze. These two elements - glass and sculpture - work together to offer a visual, tactile and spiritual experience to each visitor. At the same time, they provide for all visitors a serene environment which encourages them to give expression to individual remembrance.

The beauty of the architectural setting was inspiring. The extensive outdoor gardens, fountains, numerous benches and natural materials gave a truly welcoming feeling to the place. The clean lines, smooth surfaces and large, airy windows encouraged a strong, simple treatment of the topic.

It was left to the artistic thread to unite the others, and this is what I tried to do in the design. The overall concept of the windows is inspired by the image of an entranceway to a garden - especially as it represents the interplay between human activity and the abundance of nature. The encircling arch in each window is drawn from the Romanesque architecture found in Southern Europe and the arches of Via Dolorosa. This connects as well to the existing architecture. The archway suggests an entranceway or threshold - and gives a sense of opening into something more mysterious.

The windows use a combination of hand blown antique glass with a variety of textured glass. Additional effects are achieved through sandblasting on flashed glass. Much of the glass is translucent, to screen and diffuse the exterior view. It was also essential that the views of the glass from the exterior of the building be attractive and engaging. Strong graphic elements connect the pieces, but dramatic colour variations imbue each window with its own emotional character. The strong colour fields are an assertive element in this subdued setting. They are echoed and transformed in reflections on the polished granite walls and floor.

The bas reliefs, created by artist Joseph Stanek, are integrated into the framework of the windows. Their size - varying between fourteen and twenty eight inches high - enhances the human relationship to the windows and the surrounding architecture. Most importantly, through the use of the sculpture, the artworks become something that can be touched, prayed with and meditated upon. They provide an intimacy that could not have been achieved had figurative images been incorporated into the glass.

The "theme" of the windows at Prospect is the trial, suffering, death and resurrection that are the central events in Christianity. But that is only part of what they represent. Woven into them is the common experience and rituals of the community that uses the mausoleum, and the emotional and spiritual needs of every visitor - even those who do not share the beliefs and traditions the Stations represent. The windows represent my own experiences, and the very different experiences and vision of Joseph Stanek. At the same time, they continue a long tradition of artistic representation of the Stations.

Words can never tell the whole story, but sometimes they can illuminate, and sometimes the words of others are the most valuable. When I complete a commission, it takes a while before I can "step back" and see beyond the many elements that have gone into it, to the work as a whole. A review of the Prospect windows, written by art historian Peter Coffman, captures better than I could myself some of the intention behind this work:

Mortality has always inspired great art. The challenge it poses to artists is to convey compassion without lapsing into sentimentality; to evoke contemplation not on the loss of life, but on its meaning.

Artist Sarah Hall has answered this need at Prospect Mausoleum in Toronto with a series of stained glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross commemorate Christ's journey from condemnation to crucifixion and entombment, inviting meditation upon the meaning of that journey. The success of these windows, however, is due to more than the appropriateness of the iconography.

A curious fact facing stained glass artists is that only one half of their raw materials - the glass - can actually be touched and manipulated. The other half is pure light - the light which passes through the glass; the light which remains trapped within the glass; engorging it with intense brilliance; the light which illuminates, transforms and defines the space within.

In these windows, the light beckons us above and beyond the earthly event depicted with tactile immediacy in the bronze sculpture. The true meaning of this event is to be found in the world that lies through the archway in the centre of the window - a brilliant, ecstatic landscape of light.