With all my blogs for the Patch, I will be sharing images and information about glass. I’d like for you to consider this a visual break from the news of the world. Calming, warm handmade art... I will save my images of Bart and Lisa Simpson on the cross for a later posting.
My posting today is of a commission I made for the MTA Arts for Transit in 2010.
Well, I actually didn’t make it myself. The glass is about an inch thick, way too wide for me to cut in my New York studio, so I hired Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, in Minnesota to recreate my designs. The process took over a year, and the MTA Arts for Transit staff was an extremely organized bunch.
My main concern was to make art that commuters would enjoy seeing everyday. The challenge was to create a colorful design that would greet them in the morning and warmly welcome them home at night. When seen from a distance the art becomes one complete tree with branches stretching widely across the overpass. I wrote a haiku on the branches which reads:
A gentle Hudson
whistle begins my journey
north, and south and home
This work I dedicated to my mother and my family, including many cousins that still live very close by to Philipse Manor. Both my parents were born in the Tarrytowns.
Google Maps says Philipse Manor is 44.3 miles from Brookfield. It is in Sleepy Hollow, at the Philipse Manor Station, in New York, one stop north of Tarrytown. There are historic sites very close by including Philipsburg Manor and my favorite Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
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As with all my blogs here on the Brookfield Patch, I am open to answer any questions and comments. I will be teaching a beginners Painting on Stained Glass August 3-5, 2012.
