Outlining

Seven of the clearstory windows have been outlined and three have been completed. The clearstory windows will be done in about two weeks. The next main window that will be done is St. Rita. Hopefully she'll be done by the end of the week. That's about it for now.

Isolated Elements

I went to the Broadway Market to do some shopping and stopped off at Corpus to take some reference photos of the clearstory windows. Since I had my high powered zoom all set up, I grabed a few extreme close-ups of some of the other windows too. St. Cecilia (above) is beautfully placed in the center of the Rose Window; the downside to this is that she almost gets lost in the very busy scene. There's an orchestra of angels, the Coronation of Mary and a great blue border around St. Cecilia. I thought I would try and isolate the saint and let her shine on her own. What suprised me about the image is how warm it is. There is the aged and blackened gold of the organ, which is complemented by the saint's radiant nimbus. The silver and gray organ pipes offset the blazing red gown the martyr is wearing. With all this hectic heat from the reds and yellows the saint's face and hands are gentle and serene. I'd say St. Cecilia looks pretty good on her own.

Some Great Links.

Corpus Christi in 1912

Here are a few Corpus Christi links,

Offical Site
Facebook

Polish Genealogical Society of New York State

Forgotten Buffalo

Wikipedia

Waymarking

Pbase

Have a good day.

When A + B = Q.

Symbolism in Christianity can be a funny thing. You can take a symbol that has its own distinct meaning, put it with another symbol that has its own meaning and end up with a scene that has a whole new meaning. For example, if you take the key, which represents the Keys to the Kingdom of God and put it with a Chalice, which on its own represents the Eucharist, you end up the the symbol for the Holy Orders. In this instance the key represents the lowest position of the Minor Orders; the porter (which no longer exists due to Vatican II). The Chalice is the representation of the final position of the Sacred Orders, priesthood. It only took me four hours and two cups of coffee to put this all this together, which I would call a "good night".

To see a pic of the window, click HERE.

Citations, Arrrggghhh!

I am a firm believer in citations, but they are just a huge pain on a project like this. The physical size of the book, each page is about 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches, as well as the layout, makes it impossible to properly footnote. On top of that, the font size of the footnotes would be somewhere close to 4. The gut reaction is to switch to end notes, but that would add to many pages and the overall cost of printing would skyrocket to three times the current price. The only reasonably solution is to print up a few properly cited copies of the book and place them in local libraries and keep a few in the rectory. Then on the bottom of the bibliography page in the actual book have a little note that states "For a fully cited copy of this book, please visit...". If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know.   

What We Have So Far.

In the few short months this has project has been underway, a lot has already been accomplished. The history of Corpus Christi has been whittled down to about 500 words. The history of Franz Mayer's Stained Glass Studio is done along with two of the clerestory windows and one of the main windows. The bibliography has already reached thirty entries for five pages. I would say that we've moved pretty far for a project still in committee!

Welcome!



This blog is dedicated to the progress of the book Adorned in Light: The Stained Glass of the Corpus Christi Church Complex, Buffalo NY. Here you will find photos, progress reports, stuff we didn't have space for in the book, and ordering information.