ARTS

One year the Catholic Press Association had me as a speaker for their annual awards conference. I went up after some guy from EWTN who crowed about having recently expanded the station’s reach to 18 trillion or something like that. When I got up there, I laughed, “Well, my own media empire is a bit smaller…I operate it from a desk in my bedroom that’s about four feet long”…

“You do not want to fail, in either clarity or passion .You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sound frightening”…

Don’t make the mistake of associating stained glass only with churches. “The second gallery is the new, hip cutting-edge pieces that are really exciting.”

“If you love traditional stained glass, there’s plenty of it and you can get up close. If you like graffiti and street art, conceptual art, sci-fi—come and check out the second gallery. This is stained glass like you’ve never seen it before.”

The real thrill is getting to put (gloved) hands on these works. “In a gallery there’s often a stanchion or a tape line on the floor. We have the luxury and honor of being the people who are actually allowed up close. Are these D-rings strong enough? What if a viewer inadvertently jostles this pedestal: is the work sufficiently secured?”

“Why these vegetables together? This is the artist, sending someone to the market and presenting everyday objects in a new light.” What’s wonderful is on the one hand “the simplicity of the depiction combined with the incredible beauty, the sort of poetic feeling. You can feel the texture, the surface of the porcelain, the fabric, the wood, the glass.”