Rago Auctions

Has the physical process of making works evolved over your career? Were there construction techniques that were refined, or even discarded, over time?

Everything has become much more refined! I think that happens to anyone who practices a craft for decades. I also believe the images themselves have become more refined, in terms of design and drawing. These things are related. Around 1996 or so, I “unplugged.” I was engraving the flash glass with a rotary engraver when I thought to myself the diamond burr attachment would engrave the glass without being electrically powered. Of course, the tool rotates at something like 18,000 rpm and holding it in my fingers is going to be a radically different application of the tool. But it revolutionized things for me and led to my development of the diamond filing technique. This is how the smooth tones in the faces are accomplished; it cannot be done with sandblasting or painted enamels. I want to point out that I consider this my greatest contribution to the medium. Although the use of abrasive material dates back to the Middle Ages, I am the first to use the diamond file to this effect and it’s really lovely, if I do say so myself.

I have discarded some of the more experimental things over time—especially the ones that lead to breakage. Making the windows into bas-reliefs, which I did at times in the early 1990s, I abandoned even though I thought it looked great, but turning the window over to solder the back side was prohibitively difficult and I found myself dreading it. So, I stopped doing it.

Are there any glass artists, contemporary or historical, that you admire or have influenced your work? If so, why or how?

When I began doing stained glass, I deliberately avoided learning much about the history of the medium. With hindsight, I can see that my immersion in art history classes as an art student had, in many ways, backfired. I learned it was a man’s world and one that did not particularly inspire me. I truly dislike most work from the Renaissance to the present times. I like some modern and contemporary, but not a lot. I really didn’t want to make work like that! I wanted to make gothic art! Born at the wrong time, I guess.

But of course, I am not without influence. First and foremost, my teachers at RISD in the glass program: Ursula Huth, Richard Harned and Bruce Chao. My partner is Glenn Carter, a stained glass artist from the UK. Of course, he radically influences me because we talk for hours every day and a lot of what we talk about is stained glass. Because of his influence, I got much more interested in investigating the history of stained glass.

Some stained glass artists I am particularly inspired by: John Hayward, Patrick Reyntiens, Marc Chagall, Thomas Denny, Amir Fallah (whose work is fabricated by Judson Studios in Pasadena, CA), Georg Meisterman, Hans Gottfried Von Stockhausen (Ursula Huth’s teacher, “inventor” of the autonomous panel), Sasha Zhitneva (USA), Angela Steele (from Scotland) and Karisa Gregorio (my former student) are lesser known artists working in stained glass who should be better known.

Is stained glass a medium available at most art schools or is it still underrepresented as a field of study? What do you think are the main hindrances preventing more people from pursuing a career in stained glass?

Stained glass is, and I predict will always be, under-represented as a field of study. In fact, it is close to non-existent. The heyday of stained glass was in the Medieval Period. It re-emerged in the Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts Movement in the late 19th century, but it has never been allied with the Fine Arts (which ensured its relevance as a topic of study by insinuating itself as a liberal art around the time of the Renaissance).

The emergence of glass departments in art schools was an outgrowth of the Studio Craft Movement of the mid-20th century. Stained glass was barely a tangentially a part of that, a sort of hippie offshoot, like macramé, for example. It is very DIY, compared to other mediums which require massive amounts of training, years of practice and heavy technical equipment. With stained glass, the learning curve is manageable, meaning a hobbyist, or perhaps more bluntly, someone without a lot of artistic ability can get encouraging results fast. For better or worse, the medium survives because it can be a hobby. Interestingly, it has seen an upsurge recently, probably owing to COVID.

I believe that its accessibility and democracy are its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. I mean, some of the work made is awful! But hey: it's chugging along and still existing as a medium and so as long as that happens, someone can come along and innovate the hell out of it and do something really artistic.

As for careers, most stained glass artisans work doing repairs, perhaps restoration, some design work for homes, churches, and other architectural spaces and often they teach workshops in their studios. There’s not a huge demand, so, of course, that’s the main hindrance all around.

For me personally, I try not concern myself with a separation, imagined or real, of stained glass from Fine Art or even from Glass Art. If people want to create false dichotomies and bizarre arbitrary hierarchies, that’s their business. Hopefully it doesn’t affect mine!

Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for aspiring glass artists or admirers/collectors of stained glass?

Stained glass is an amazing medium that promises a lot. The Abbot Suger, designer of St. Denis, the first Gothic cathedral, outside of Paris, was reputed to have said “stained glass is enlightenment embodied.” When it fails to deliver on that promise, it can be the most bitterly disappointing experience. It’s no wonder stained glass isn’t seen as an art form. But if the Medieval windows sought to confer inspiration and enlightenment to those who would see it, there’s no reason that experience is not available to us today should we be open to it (and that includes people of a secular background). Beholding a stained glass window can enable, encourage, and literally enact the process of being filled with light. It sounds like some kind of preternatural phenomenon, but it’s a physical fact.

My other advice is don’t be afraid of breakage. Every stained glass piece gets breaks in it. They are usually not structural, and they do not harm the design or the look of the piece—however repairing them puts them at a great risk of further, more harmful damage. They are part of the piece—enjoy them! The piece is still perfect. Maybe more so.

Finally, is there anything else that you would like to touch on, be it in regard to the pieces we are offering, your career, or your work, that you feel would be important for our audience to know?

This is from my artist’s statement, but it covers a few things not mentioned that come up a lot when people ask about my work. Namely “why is your work so “depressing” …or some such. It also mentions very directly a few words on my techniques:

I found the beauty of stained glass to be the perfect counterpoint to ugly and difficult subjects. Although the figures I work with are supposed to be ordinary people doing ordinary things, I see them as having much in common with the old medieval windows of saints and martyrs. They seem to be caught in a transitional moment when despair becomes hope or darkness becomes inspiration. They seem poised between the threshold of everyday reality and epiphany, caught between tragedy and comedy.

My work is centered on the idea of transforming the wretched into the beautiful: say, unspeakable grief, unbearable sentimentality, or nerve-wracking ambivalence, and representing it in such a way that it is inviting and safe to contemplate and captivating to look at. I am at one with those who believe art is a way of feeling one’s feelings in a deeper, more poignant way.

I would describe my process as derived almost entirely from traditional techniques in use for centuries. The imagery is predominantly engraved into layers of glass; only the black and yellow are painted and fired on in a kiln. The pieces are soldered together in a copper foil and lead matrix.

For more about Judith Schaechter visit her website and watch her live demonstration at the Toledo Museum of Art from 2020.