My college has provided me many amazing academic opportunities thus far that have broadened my intellectual horizons. One purpose of a liberal arts education is to truly engage in a subject matter that is unfamiliar and new. During my year and a half at Williams, I have always been encouraged to explore all academic and creative fields, regardless of my major. Unfortunately, embracing this new perspective on learning never came easily to me. I was apprehensive about taking different classes and definitely concerned about the grade payoff. However, this winter, I finally had the chance and the courage to take a class that was not only outside of my comfort zone, but was a unique and unusual experience.
During the month of January, between fall and spring semesters, my school offers a transitional mini-semester known as Winter Study. This is a month-long period where students take only one-class on a pass-or-fail basis. The goal is to allow students to study in-depth a specific subject and explore new skills. My freshman year, I cautiously chose a Winter Study class that dealt with material I was very comfortable with. Unfortunately, I felt I got so little out of the experience and the lack of challenge and learning really took a toll on the entire tone of Winter Study. Given this experience, I decided, this year, to choose a course that I knew nothing about: stained-glass tiling.
To start off with, I am not an artist. I have little natural-born artistic ability, and I have never taken a studio art class in my life. Nevertheless, I can and do appreciate art, especially stained glass. When I was young, my parents took me to the Queens Museum of Art to view its Tiffany lamps exhibit. I enjoyed the beautiful shining glass so much that I begged my parents to buy a stained-glass window for our living room. While they definitely did not have the cash to purchase a stunning panel for our home, they did compromise by buying a cheaper Tiffany-inspired chandelier for our foyer.
To me, it seemed like an incredible and ambitious idea for me to learn this craft and be able to create some beautiful glass pieces of my own. Furthermore, the course would be taught by a professional stained-glass artist, Debora Coombs, who has several stunning windows hanging in churches across America and England. To learn from someone who is passionate and truly knows her craft would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was exciting, although I really doubted my ability to create anything impressive. Well, thankfully, it was a very long winter!
The course was really a test of my patience and perseverance. I had to quickly pick up new skills, from scoring and breaking glass, to accurately measuring pieces, to soldering the pieces together.
The majority of our time was spent working on our final projects, which was a stained-glass piece of our choosing. I decided on a panel inspired by the beautiful Berkshire autumns. I would show a bunch of leaves as they transitioned from summery greens to brilliant and rich fall tones of gold, orange, and red.
Although my project was, by relativity, not the most complicated or complex in the class, it was a challenge for me. I struggled from the very beginning, trying to cut out my irregularly shaped tiles. The personal battle would only continue, as my lack of artistic skills would make painting each tile a tedious experience.
Our instructor was inspiring and her guidance was invaluable. Her encouragement and advice often got me over stumbling blocks throughout the month. She helped me overcome my perfectionism and fear of dissatisfaction by coaxing me to embrace the imperfections and “mistakes” in my piece. With a portrayal of nature, uniformity is not as important as maintaining the naturalness of the scene. Hence, the jagged edges or cut-off bits of my leaves could be seen as the irregularity of nature’s own hand. This new perspective truly helped me appreciate my piece, along with all the time and work that went into creating it.
Watching my project, “Nature’s Imperfections,” move through all the stages of the stained-glass tiling process was incredible. I documented my own journey through a series of pictures I sent to my parents daily (mostly, seeking compliments and “wows”). Every day brought its own set of challenges and new lessons to be learnt. My classmates and I provided each other with support and company as we often worked full days in the studio together. Watching other projects come together was almost as meaningful as seeing my own transform. Each of our victories and successes were a triumph for the entire class. We never compared works, because we all developed our own styles and each piece was beautiful and special in its own way.
With a winter study class so involved as stained-glass tiling, the winter passed by quickly. The miserable weather did not affect my mood as it did the year before. It was rewarding to learn a skill that was so unique and to come away with a piece of artwork that is, might I say, rather impressive. The meaning of winter study finally made sense to me with this class. There was so much excitement, pride, and satisfaction with learning such a unique skill and walking away with a project that reflects a month of hard work. Now, if only I can get my parents to knock out a window at home and install my new piece of art!
You can learn more about my stained glass window and my winter study journey at my blog.
Aglaia Ho is a sophomore at Williams College and a native New Yorker. She also writes for her own blog at www.aglai
