wonderful window watching

Today whizzed down to St Leonard's, St Leonards. Always rather a depressing area of coast I think, especially on a drizzly day like today. Church rather shabby looking but a very welcoming helpful lady, and a double sided colour illustrated leaflet about the windows, four double panels each side of the nave and a triple panel in the sanctuary entitled Transfiguration (image above). Early Reyntiens work, I rather liked them except one couldn't see most of them clearly enough.

travels

This time to St John The Baptist, Ilford and a couple of amazing floor to ceiling windows, unpainted, apparently abstract but of course Patrick's layers of symbolism, almost Art Deco looking, no hand painting, and wonderful subtle soft colouring, pale greys, mauves, light yellow, touches of turquoise. Exquisite. Well worth a visit. Details above.

An update on St Peter and St Paul, Aldeburgh, the memorial window to Benjamin Britten, designed by Piper but carried out by Reyntiens.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds - I've visited the city previously but never the cathedral so took the opportunity. Actually rather disappointing, somehow lacks the gravitas that accretion over the ages can bring (no Reyntiens windows).

And yet another trip to Ely Stained Glass Museum, wonderfully enthusiastic young curator, revisited the Piper/Reyntiens Coventry panel and Reyntiens own Temptation of St Anthony.

Busy few days, then completed the Reyntiens family slide show for the DVD today. Meanwhile poor Charles was faced with trying to fit a voice-over onto the start of the film - previously recorded in his own mellifluous tones. Unfortunately the recording he was sent was much slower than the original with huge pauses between the words (i.e. not fitting the images) so he spent most of the day editing the pauses, but it was still too long, so he then had to actually export the sound to some special audio processing software to speed it without altering the pitch.

The things we do for art!

lawks a mercy!

Spent most of yesterday making another slide show for the DVD of Patrick's autonomous panels as sold through Goldmark Gallery recently - that's five I've made to date, the others being earlier autonomous panels, stained glass on location, the work of former students and a Reyntiens family slide show featuring Patrick's sketchbooks and cartoons for panels, his wife Anne's beautiful paintings and hopefully some of John Reyntiens work.
Anyway, today was looking up information about Edinburgh College of Art in Wikpedia (as one does) - I was HORRIFIED to discover that the alumni list did NOT include either Patrick or Anne - so I proceeded to add them to the Hall of Fame!

Yippee!

Despite cooking for the multitudes over the weekend, in recognition of an aunt's 96th birthday (!), I managed to finish the Reyntiens catalogue today - well as much as I am prepared to put on the DVD. It is by no means definitive - but could be if someone gives me backing/money! The ground work is there. When I questioned him a couple of years ago Patrick agreed to my compiling his catalogue of work, but little did I believe at the time that it would progress to this stage.
Phew, so now I can concentrate on other work and start thinking about the Fay Godwin film at last, although poor Charles was faced with yet more changes to the DVD over the weekend.