An artist I be diggin’.

Before Tiffany’s style of stained glass, the windows in Europe were painted with a mixture of powdered glass, fired, and rinse-and-repeat until layers and shadows built up. It’s extremely hard and you have to train for a long time. It looks like this.

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Now, in Alabama there is a big artist collective and they had a group show where they created work based on Grumpy Cat in the material of their choosing. Most of the art was lovely, but one piece was especially stunning – Judson Portzer’s Sir Grumpsalot. Brilliant.

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Here’s Judson’s bio:

The time-honored skill of glass painting sets Judson Portzer’s studio apart as an almost magical space within Lowe Mill. Judson uses “paint” consisting of finely ground particles of colored glass to render intensely beautiful images that seem to carry the weight of centuries of history. Layers of the glass paint are added to panes and then selectively removed to create highlights before being fired in a kiln to become permanently fused.

Here’s some of his drawings.

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Here’s his calligraphy.

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And here are a few of his glass paintings. Sometimes he works with other artists. Judson does the faces, hands and details, and someone else does the fabric and background.

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He does oldey-timey style (real oldey-timey, like Byzantine) windows as well, if that’s what the project requires.

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And I really like this butterfly (it’s the same butterfly, photographed first in a window and then on a light table). And this flower.

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I think he’s great. Apparently in addition to doing church windows, Judson has a booth at the local Renaissance fair. I wish he was closer, I would totally buy a piece of his. So awesome.

Addition: Someone also did a Grumpy Cat Wall Street Journal portrait. I will never get tired of this cat and this meme. Never.

RE1M

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