Living: Stained Glass, Back and Blooming

Old skills and new techniques

"To beholde hit wasgretjoye."

—Chaucer, describing his "wel-y-glased" chamber.

The shimmering lights and the shifting imagery of stained-glass have entranced the eye and expanded the imagination since the evolution of the art some 16 centuries ago. Today, as pervasively as sunshine pouring through the great windows of Chartres, the resurgent art and craft of stained glass is irradiating the American scene.

In this decade, the challenge of this once and future form has attracted a vast legion of artists, students and collectors. In the U.S. there are now 5,000 professionals working in glass and, according to Patrick White, president of the St. Louis-based Stained Glass Association of America, at least 100,000 hobbyists; ten years ago there were fewer than 100. The output of artists and amateurs is becoming highly visible in offices and stores, schools, courthouses, chapels, restaurants, apartment buildings and homes. The pieces may be room dividers, skylights or side lights, bathtub screens, doors, windows or—most significantly—hanging or freestanding "autonomous" works that can be displayed like paintings or sculptures or suspended in front of windows. As Lithuanian-born Artist Albinas Elskus notes: "You can actually suspend an image in midair. You cannot find any other material that does that."

At the first major exhibition of its kind ever mounted in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts is showing 33 pieces of "New Stained Glass," devoted to small, "personal" works by leading artists that range from Miroesque abstraction to ribald political satire. One offbeat work by Californian Richard Posner, 29, is called The Big Enchilada 1975; it depicts in allegorical terms the White House infighting over Watergate. A similar show at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles drew 2,000 people on weekends, while another recent exhibition in the Washington suburb of Reston was jammed during its six-week run.

Glass mania infects people of all ages, occupations and educational backgrounds. However, most of the professionals are young. One of the most innovative artists in the field, Bay Area-based Paul Marioni, 36, had previously worked as a garage body-and-fender man (though he has degrees in English and philosophy). Ecuador-born Frank Del Campo, 44, who works on Manhattan's Upper West Side, went from soldier to singer to antique dealer before becoming a full-time artist. Philadelphia's Ray King, 27, until recently had to make ends meet by restoring old stained-glass windows; now he is one of the few artists in the medium who can earn a living making his own experimental pieces. Benida Solow, 30, whose lustrous Innerscape, a freestanding screen, was included in the Los Angeles show, has been represented at five other California exhibitions in the past two years.

Says San Francisco Artist Peter Mollica, 36: "The reason it's happening for serious artists is because it's happened on the hobbyist level. I think you have to thank the amateur. A lot of people who are serious now about stained glass started out as amateurs."