The Building of the
Theresa House Window

By Susan Shanklin

The Theresa House window was made possible by a grant provided by Prairie Lake Regional Arts Council with funds provided by McKnight Foundation.

To start any stained glass piece, one must first come up with a design. With the Theresa House window, I meditated and prayed for direction for a design that would portray the Theresa House mission, which is interim housing for homeless families and single women. It says in their brochure, "Theresa House can be a place of refuge and restoration where the Spirit of Jesus through human caring and invested relationship is free to bring healing and wholeness."

As I sat on the couch in the upstairs of my house with my sketch book with the Theresa House brochure beside me I thought of a hand reaching upward releasing a bird into a nest high in a tree. This inspired idea set the course of the window for the Theresa House.

To design the bird I researched blue birds on the internet, watched birds at my bird feeders and even sketched a small dead cornish chick from my flock I was raising, which I laid on top of the trash can. I noted blue birds have black beaks, not yellow. To keep with the mission, I used three pieces of mirrored glass in the out stretched wing to produce a reflection of women passing through the door of the Theresa House looking for help.

After assembling the bird, using the copper foil technique and soldering it, I moved on to the hand. Hands are difficult to do!

To get the most lifelike looking hand, I drew my own hand. I didn't want a masculine hand but a more feminine hand since the hands-on staff is all women.

I used my new ring saw which I was able to purchase with some of the grant money to cut out the hand from very beautiful glass, which really was an end from a larger piece of slab glass. By using the saw I was able to cut right through the thick lumpy end, saving the multicolored tans for the hand. By using the saw, I was able to give the fingers that more lifelike look that I so needed for this piece.

The hand was also assembled the same as the bird and soldered and put away, while I started on the next piece of the window, which was the nest. Here, I did not use a pattern, but for the first time went totally freehand. I looked through bins of scrap glass, cutting and piecing together small twigs of glass to construct the nest. This too was foiled and soldered and put away.

To anchor the piece in one corner I designed a flowering vine. For the center of each flower I used small purple nuggets. In the background I used confetti glass to convey a bushy denseness with different green-textured glass for the leaves.

I tried to use lots of textured glass in this piece to give another dimension even without touching the piece. I didn't want this window to just be a piece of colored glass stuck in a door, but a colorful, visual escape for the viewers.

After the four parts of the upper window were completed, I was ready to complete the background of wispy blue glass. The wisps of white seemed to swirl in the blue sky blowing through the mottled green glass of the tree tops.

With the upper portion of the window completed with copper foil, lead came was added to the bottom so the logo and name could be added. This had been sand blasted into purple flash glass and precisely cut, so it could be slipped into the heart of the came.

Flash glass is a clear glass with a very thin layer of colored glass on top. You place you design on the bottom of the glass and place a piece of clear film on the color glass as a stencil. Using your light table you proceed in cutting out the design, and, in my case, letters and logo, of the film. When you sand blast the piece, only the exposed glass will be transformed, leaving a crisp transparent opening on the glass.

There is three separate pieces of sand blasted flash glass in the Theresa House window. Two of the logo and one of the name. Separating the flash glass are two more pieces of lead came.

Surrounding the whole window is zinc to add strength to the completed window. The finished window is 26 by 24 inches. The window will be inserted into a opening in the receiving door of the Theresa House office of the interior.

If you have any questions about the building of this window please E-mail me and I'll answer you via E-mail. Thanks for joining me on this journey of the building of the Theresa House leaded glass window.

Theresa House, Mankato