The architectural art form also tells about its community. Throughout Missoula, bits of local culture are hidden in the glass along with images of saints and prophets.
"I do gain a lot in looking at those old windows," said artist Dana Boussard. "They're magnificent. The classical approaches are really inspiring."
The presence of stained glass tells a lot about the relative prominence of a church community, she said. The art form can be fantastically heavy, requiring substantial supporting architecture to display it. In her Great Falls project, Boussard conferred with architects for six months to ensure the building had enough wall and floor reinforcement to hold her windows.
The effort is also expensive. Holy Spirit Episcopal Parish was built in 1915, but didn't get its present stained glass window set until 40 years later. Even then, the windows were installed over a 10-year period as the congregation worked to raise the money. A Missoulian story from 1953 reported its nave window cost $1,750. Today, insurance for the 12 windows provides an estimated value of more than $250,000.
Church windows come in two general types of material: stained glass and art glass. Art glass is a relatively recent development as glass makers learned better chemical formulas to make specific color shades. Stained glass was the more classic technique of working with a somewhat limited palette of colored glass and painting or glazing additional colors onto its surface.
The windows in Holy Spirit and at St. Paul Lutheran Church both came from the studio of Charles Connick of Boston. They show the classic style of stained glass, with facial features in particular painted in. Connick's studio was founded in 1912. His creations are also highlights of the Princeton University Chapel in New Jersey and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Parish pushes the other direction, with every detail expressed with a specific chunk of colored glass. Creator Gabriel Loire revolutionized the window design with his method of setting the glass in concrete instead of traditional lead. He also chipped and cracked each piece of three-quarter-inch-thick glass to make gem-like refractions.
University of Montana art professor Rafael Chacon said architects continue to debate the merits of religious art being worked into windows rather than wall paintings. Is Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling a better creation than Notre Dame's rose window? Missoula's St. Francis Catholic Church straddles this argument with both figurative windows and vigorously decorated walls and ceiling.
There are also issues of architecture and climate. Fresco work needs a warmer, drier climate for artists to paint in, which makes stained glass more appropriate to northern latitudes, Chacon said. And dramatic windows depend on high and airy construction techniques. They can be remarkably heavy, which makes it hard to put big ones in wooden structures.
Even light can vary. Stained glass expert and Episcopal priest the Rev. Nat Pierce observed in his studies of stained glass that "there are differences in the outside light from one country to another. That's why stained-glass windows made in England by English craftspersons often do not show well in an American church. The light here is different."
Church windows aren't always bound to tradition. The University Congregational Church displays a great example in its set of windows designed by Missoula artist Walter Hook.
"They're simple cubes of colored glass, which used to run along the north-south side of the church," Chacon said. "They're now on the new entrance of the building. It's a sweet project because he involved the whole congregation."
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