Maximum Security Prison Chapel
Huntsville, Texas
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Architect: Lawrence Associates, Fort Worth, TX
Positive Motion
Ten at 2.7' w. by 15.7' h. each
The windows in this chapel are the same welded steel security frames used throughout the prison. That’s a lot of six by nine inch openings. What can you do? At first the idea was to sandwich stained glass panels against the frames (which would be glazed with clear glass). I advised against this for two important reasons. First, adding lead-lines to the already confining grid would add more light obscuring and confining linework. Second, the stained glass allowance couldn’t afford conventional stained glass, anyway. How about solid panes of etched, flashed glass glazed directly into the security frames?
The design begins with a blue field of transparent glass in each window. Starting with the rear windows, a small, white, etched shape intrudes into the blue from below. These white shapes contain upward-striving lines whose red color symbolizes our worldly existence. Moving from back to front, the lines in each successive pair of windows become increasingly less chaotic. Lines in the front-most windows create the illusion of upward sweeping arcs. This crescendo of positive, upward striving doesn’t cross the heavy horizontal mullions toward the tops of the Nave windows.
This rising crescendo of lines finally make their way up into the upper sections of the Altar Windows. No longer in disarray, these lines meld into ordered, wispy and golden arabesques that signifies resurrection, transformation, metamorphosis and transcendence.
Materials: Flashed and etched German mouthblown glass.
