ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 24, 1996 TAG: 9610250008
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
On a clear afternoon, when the sun is at just the right place in the sky, the sanctuary of the Church of the Transfiguration near Fincastle is itself transformed.
As the sun shines through the stained-glass images of Mary and the transfigured Christ, a sea of blue and magenta pours across the room and spills over the pews.
When Donna Layne and Julie McDowell see the jewel tones reflected off the walls and the fixtures, they forget, for a while, just how much anxiety and planning and hard work went into creating the windows.
"The light comes through," McDowell said, "and you can't wait to do the next one."
Layne, who owns Caladium Glass in Southwest Roanoke County, and McDowell, who runs Julie McDowell Design in Roanoke, met in 1982, when they both entered a competition to design a window for Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church in Roanoke County. The church chose McDowell's contemporary design, a window of blue, green and clear glass that symbolizes God's grace to man. But she had never actually created a stained-glass window, so she asked Layne, who had been working with glass for several years, to collaborate, and the partnership was born.
Each brings her own style to the partnership. McDowell specializes in contemporary and religious motifs. Layne designs traditional windows and does all the glass work.
"We have a terrific exchange," McDowell said.
Together, they have created windows for businesses, homes and churches across Southwest Virginia, and as far away as Richmond and Charlottesville. Locally, their work is on display at the two Catholic churches, plus Carlos Brazilian International Cuisine and Arzu, both in downtown Roanoke, McDonald's in Pulaski, and the Ground Round in Roanoke.
Layne has been working with stained glass since the late 1970s. Her first creation, a reproduction of a Tiffany lamp, still hangs in her dining room; her husband won't let her get rid of it.
Making lamps was all she had planned to do when she started working with glass. But the marketplace changes, and so do plans. She doesn't design lamps at all anymore; few people are willing to pay for hand-constructed stained-glass lamps when they can buy mass-produced ones at building supply stores.
Nor does she sell craft supplies or suncatchers or ready-made stained glass. All the pieces that come out of her studio are permanent, commissioned works, and all the concepts are original and are designed specifically for each client. Layne and McDowell won't work from design books or mass-produced patterns.
"We try to meet with clients and get a feel for what they want, as well as what they already have in their homes or their business," Layne said. "There's little things you can pick up when you talk with people-''
``- that sometimes they hadn't even thought about," McDowell continued.
That's what happened at Carlos in Roanoke. The restaurant owners initially told Layne and McDowell they wanted a rain forest scene, complete with toucans and greenery, on stained-glass panels for the back dining room.
If you go to Carlos today, you'll see nothing resembling a jungle. Instead, the glass features a stylized scene of Rio de Janiero. "It developed into an entirely different look than they envisioned," Layne said, the result of numerous conversations between client and artists.
It takes at least six to eight weeks to complete a window, longer if the client doesn't know what he wants. Once a design has been approved and the window mapped out like a blueprint, Layne takes it to her studio - a cluttered workshop in her basement - and begins cutting the pieces of the design and assembling them into a breakable puzzle. She measures the pieces of lead that separate and hold the glass fragments in place, then solders it all together.
This is slow, sometimes tedious work. The only machine Layne uses is a grinder, to smooth the edges of the small glass pieces. All the cutting she does by hand. It takes longer that way, and to the untrained eye the end result may look indistinguishable from an assembly-line piece. But hand-cutting preserves the integrity of the art, she said.
"When I see people with machinery, working with glass saws and things, it kind of ruins the medium," Layne said.
Layne and McDowell both have had to learn how to design for glass, which can be a temperamental medium. It will withstand only careful cutting; even so, pieces break, shapes won't fit together perfectly and must be re-ground and refitted.
Color is the showy part of their work, the part that customers love to talk about. But when the sun goes down, the splendid flood of color disappears. What remains - if the glass artist knew what she was doing - is line.
Line, said Layne, shows movement and grace. Line is in the design of the window, in the way the strips of lead delineate and accent the colored pieces. But the movement also is inherent in the glass itself, in the swirls and whorls and bubbles that create the glass's texture. A glass artist must read the movement of the glass and incorporate it into the design of the window, Layne said; otherwise, the finished product will look like a careless patchwork of glass scraps.
Customers pay for that expertise. Most of Layne and McDowell's windows cost $60 to $85 a square foot. The price increases with the intricacy of the design and the cost of the glass.
"I know it's expensive," Layne said. "But we're not producing crafts when we're working together. It's art, and art is expensive."
Even so, Layne has about as much business as she can handle by herself. She doesn't need to advertise, other than a listing in the yellow pages under the "Glass - stained & leaded" heading.
Right now, Layne has a few residential windows on the table. And the designs for several additional windows for Transfiguration Church - companions to the Mary and Christ pieces - recently were approved.
She'll probably be in her workshop almost nonstop between now and Christmas, she said.
"If we really go whole-hog, I think we could build an exceptional business," Layne said. She could hire assistants, farm out some of the work, make a big name for herself. "But then it wouldn't all be hands-on for me."
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. 1. Donna Layne and Julie McDowellby CNBcollaborated on this stained-glass window depicting the Virgin Mary
at the Church of the Transfiguration near Fincastle. color. 2. Donna
Layne hammers a piece of lead in the process of constructing a
stained-glass window at her Caladium Glass studio in Roanoke
County.