Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County
The Story of the Earth Window
As the plans for the great room in which Sunday services would be held were being developed in the eighties, Harold Dean, our minister for thirty years, said that he wanted the front of the room to have a big window showing the planet Earth as seen from outer space. He thought we might be able to get a photograph enlarged for that purpose. Discussion with the research department at Eastman Kodak revealed that no photographic process could produce a transparency that would last longer than a year or two, very much less if subjected to sunshine.
The possibility of painting on glass was then investigated. A talented local artist, Stanto Pezzutti, was approached and asked whether he would consider doing the painting. He said he might consider it, but only if the window would be surrounded by a dark blue or black wall. He suggested we check on the durability of painted glass.
Firms that deal in glass paints, for those making small stained glass designs, said that the paint would have to be baked in an oven after being applied and this would be impossible for a window six feet in diameter. They said stained glass was the only possible choice. Up to this point we had resisted stained glass, thinking that the lead boundaries of the necessarily small pieces of glass would ruin the picture. Then a friend suggested that we visit Bihler Stained Glass in Lincroft.
Gary Bihler is not only competent in stained glass technology, he is an artist with a sense of responsibility for the quality of his finished work. He immediately took an interest in producing the window. Over a period of many weeks his work involved various steps.
Photographs obtained through NASA and the Geological Society of America showed only views of Africa and Arabia or almost completely cloud-covered views of North and South America. We took photographs of a globe showing North and South America and gave them to Gary, but he pointed out that he had a globe in his studio which he was studying as he worked. The NASA photographs were helpful in suggesting cloud forms.
Stained glass artists have available to them a very large selection of colors and types of glass from the glass manufacturers. Gary began to study the various colors that would be appropriate for different parts of the continents. The central part of the United States should be green, he decided, to represent the fertile fields there, but the infertile regions near the Artic Ocean should be brown. Greenland should be white because it is ice-covered, but how could it be distinguished from the white clouds surrounding it? Gary decided to use a pebbled white glass that might represent the rough ice surface and would separate Greenland from the clouds.
A circular area six feet in diameter on the wall of his studio was devoted to planning the window. Pieces of paper that would be the patterns for cutting the pieces of glass were arranged within the circle as the glass pieces would be in the window. Some of these had to be narrow for streaks of clouds, some broad for patches of open ocean. Notice these shapes and colors as you look at the window. Note also such special places as the Mississippi delta.
When all had been approved (and greatly admired) by a group from our congregation, the many pieces of glass had to be cut with great precision so that they would fit perfectly together. The only painting Gary did was at the boundaries of the continents where he thought the lead boundary did not look the way he wanted it to there. This paint work was then fired in his furnace.
He told us that a six-foot-diameter window could not be hung without a couple of supporting bars across it. This was a disappointment. The thought of straight bars across the globe was distressing. Then Gary suggested curved parallels of latitude, selected so that they divided the window into three sections. Rather than choosing the equator and some other parallel at random, he agreed that he could use the bounding parallels for the tropics: the Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer. It seemed to us incredibly difficult to make supporting bars that were curved along their lengths with the right curvature for the parallels around the globe as seen from space. Also, it would be difficult to fit against those curved bars the many small pieces of glass that formed the pattern of the Earth's surface. But we learned the Gary Bihler is capable of doing incredible things.
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Artist Gary Bihler, above right, readies a section of the window for installation. |
Finally, on August 13, 1993, the time came for installing the window. Gary had engaged a firm with whom he had worked before. They came with a dolly-mounted elevator with a platform at the top of where two men stood to put the window in place. When the elevator was at ground level Gary handed them the part below the Tropic of Capricorn. The elevator went up and the men fitted it gently into the great circular frame. Then they came down and Gary gave them the part between the two parallels. It fitted perfectly as it was lowered onto the Tropic of Capricorn. Finally, they took the last piece from Gary and fitted it between the Tropic of Cancer and the top of the frame. The restrained rim of the frame was pressed into place and the installation of the window was complete.
Harold Dean was present at the installation
and it gave him a great sense of satisfaction. "After all", he
said, "isn't that what it's all about? Our inter-connectedness with
the whole world."
