Clearing the Clearstory.

The clearstory windows are done! I want to thank my friends at the American Glass Guild with some of the “Subject identification help”. It appears that Corpus Christi may be home to a couple of unique icons. The writing is about 43% done. Next up will be finishing up the vestibule windows, which I hope to be done with by the end of the weekend.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! There's not much to say since there hasn't been much writing going on. Between the holidays and the 9 to 5 creeping into after hours, I just don't have the time. In the past three weeks I've only gottten three windows finished, which brings the overall total to 31%. I did get a lot of outlining and detailing done, like finding out where the remains of Blessed Jolanta are. My better half got me a great Christmas gift to help with this project, Lives of the Polish Saints / Zywoty Polskich Swietych. I've wanted this book for a while, and it has just about every Polish saint in it. Now if they only had a book of all the Polish Blesseds...

"And now you know… the rest of the story."

One of my favorite subjects to research for stained glass has to be the Apocryphal Books of the Bible. A lot of the windows from the life of Mary come out of these apocryphal texts. From the Nativity of Mary, up to her marriage to Joseph and flight in to Egypt, most of her non-biblical life is covered. A few of these “hidden” books cover the early life of Christ. There are stories of a child Christ giving life to clay birds and raising his friend from the dead. Although the Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph is the only Apocryphal image in Corpus Christi, there are many others in the region. Some of the best windows depicting the life of Mary in Western New York are located in the Alumni Chapel at Niagara University.

            Now that the Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph is done, three of the main windows and four of the clearstory windows are completed. By the end of the weekend I hope to have the clearstory finished up so I can start on the vestibule windows.      

Lovely Rita

The Saint Rita window is done. This one was hard. How do you cut down a woman who did so much in her life to 300 words? On top of that, her life story is inconsistent from biographer to biographer. To even things out I relied on her "official" bio from her canonization, the book St. Rita of Cascia Saint by Sicardo and, the website of Basilica di Santa Rita da Cascia, the home of her remains. So far, I am up to 39 citations for the booklet. The next main window I am going to work on is the Espousal of Mary and Joseph followed by Saint Hyacinth. Cheers.

Saint Rita Links
The Basilica di Santa Rita da Cascia
Saint Rita at New Advent
Life of Sister St. Rita of Cascia by Rev. Daniel J. Murphy, O.S.A.

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.