REMODEL: The Great Stained Glass Affair Panes 4

Then there was four! The final pane, took me the longest to figure out. As stated before, I had this silly idea of designing all four panes, myself. Well, that didn’t happen, and I got it in my head that I would design the fourth pane. Four months later. I came to my senses. The design of the fourth pane was a troublesome decision. Being the last design I figured out it was the last piece to be produced. I considered a Kurt Schwitters piece for the design but I realized, the obvious choice was in my own collection.

I discovered Eleanor Coen’s art during my college years, studying the WPA era of art, especially in the mid-west. I read about Jackson Pollock and Max Kahn and many other artists who emerged from the WPA era in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In my readings about Max Kahn’s, his wife Eleanor Coen was always referenced but finding her artwork was hard in the 90’s.

“Yellow Sky” Eleanor Coen

With the dawn of internet in the late 90’s, her artwork started to appear more and more, and I was hooked. I bought my first piece by Eleanor in 2001 at auction. Titled “Yellow Sky” was from 1962 and I was hooked. Since then I’ve added several more pieces to the collection. But Yellow Sky still has prominent place in my mind today. I played around with the templating of Yellow Sky to see if it would be possible to create it into an actual stained glass pane. All four pieces I built using Adobe Illustrator. For this piece I really had two options in the piece.

The structured building on the right side of the painting, or the more Gauidi-esque building on the left side of the painting. While John from ArtWrks thought the Frank Lloyd Wright piece was going to be the most tasking piece to construct. The Coen pane would prove to be more difficult, because the frame work of each glass was more subjective. I ended up going with the left side of the artwork and even threw in a sun, because it gave more balance to the artwork. In my original sketch, the sun was ommited. In the original painting image, you can see the sun in the distance of the left side. Again, John pulled out the sandblasting tool, to blow out the hole for the sun, in the larger yellow pane.

Upon install of the Mary Blair pane (3rd Pane), John asked to see the painting. He was worried about the colors referenced in the photo was not going to translate. Upon seeing the painting in person, he was glad he asked, because he was going in a direction he was not liking for the color scheme of the glass selection. Worries aside, the piece came together. If I had to pick a favorite piece, I would have to say this Coen pane. Yellow Sky is still one of my favorite pieces in our collection. Watching this one come alive was a present in itself. It’s also my favorite pane in the skylight. I am not complaining. I’ll post a complete view of the four panes in a new post later this week,