Scott Parsons

University of Alberta CCIS Video

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:32:16 +0000

My terrazzo design for the University of Alberta is highlighted in this video, starting at about 1:25.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MO4NYFaQo

Gloria Dei Glass Installation Almost Complete

admin — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:09:01 +0000

Gloria Dei installation by City Glass glaziers of Sioux Falls and assisted by Tim O’Neil.

Ecclesiastical Painting in Germany

admin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 05:50:19 +0000

My second trip to Germany at Derix Glasstudios in Taunusstein. This is truly a glorious, magical place where one’s spirit is renewed in the presence of great artists while working intensely with color, energy and light. The alchemy of fire fusing molten silica with metallic salts, oxides and pigments produces translucent hues of color and opalescent glints of material so beautiful, oceanic and sublime that stained glass has stood at the heart of what is transcendent and numinous in Western civilization for more than one-thousand years.

Derix master painter Olaf Hanweg and I are creating 24 stained glass panels for the new Gloria Dei ELCA Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls. The baptismal panel above has been fired three times at this viewing and will probably be fired two more times yet. Many, many thanks to Barbara Derix and Karl-Heinz Traut, and the congregation and staff of Gloria Dei.

Pictured below, I am working on the Lamb of God altar panel.

Gloria Dei

admin — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:41:39 +0000

Gloria Dei Gloria Dei is an unprecedented ecclesial stained-glass design for the new Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This project consists of 24 separate architectural glass panels for the chancel façade: 750 sq. ft. in size and rising over 36 ft. in height. Each panel was created using a number of traditional and contemporary glass treatments, including silver stain, acid-etching, sandblasting, and enameling. The panels become more transparent as they gain in elevation, allowing the fleeting changes in the sky and clouds to increasingly influence the shapes and colors you see. Even a passing bird in flight can be seen through the upper panels.

Created for the glory of God – Gloria Dei – these windows celebrate the magnificence of the Creation story, the life of Christ and the life of the Church. The abstract design and colors are suggestive of spiritual themes (veneration, contemplation, and praise) that allow worshipers to experience the windows in distinct ways each time the congregation gathers for worship. This experience is shaped by the liturgical season, the order of worship, scripture lessons, hymn selections, and each congregant’s faith journey. The color yellow for example, which is always shown in stained glass as the color of God, extends near the center in a vertical band from the heavens above and reaches downward to literally touch the earth below. This abstract gesture shows how God can touch us in the midst of our lives.

Symbols of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, the Paschal candle, and the Fruits of the Spirit are all significant elements for the Church and are conveyed in the panels on the right. It is my hope that this design will resonate with each viewer as a celebratory offering of thanksgiving for all that God has given to us, and to recognize our individual role in the body of Christ to bring peace and healing to the world.

Artist and Pastor Linda Henke states, “There are places, for example, where I see the suggestion of stars, which for me conjure up the stars in the Genesis creation story … connections with God’s promise to Abraham that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens … the psalmist’s exclamation of wonder in gazing at the heavens (who are human beings that you should be mindful of us?) … the star that marked God’s coming to take on human flesh and become one with us… the star that led the sages to the Christ and then to carry news of his coming to all the world … the morning star that gives way to the rising sun … the night sky that we can see so much more clearly here in Indiana, where we live somewhat away from the city lights … the incredible Hubble telescope images that explode the boundaries of our perceptions of the universe.”

Artist: Scott Parsons
Architects: Koch Hazard Architects, Sioux Falls, SD
Fabrication: Derix Glasstudios, Taunusstein, Germany; Olaf Hanweg, painter
General Contractor: Fiegen Construction, Sioux Falls, SD
Installation: City Glass, Sioux Falls, SD and Tim O’Neil, Magdalena, NM

CCIS Terrazzo work almost finished

admin — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 04:42:34 +0000

The main CCIS E–W hallway nears completion in snowy Edmonton. Merry Christmas!

Standing Female

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 04:50:03 +0000

Untitled, charcoal drawing, 36 x 24 inches, 2010

Staining Glass

admin — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 02:29:53 +0000

I spent this week at Derix Glasstudios in Taunusstein, Germany, developing production techniques with Barbara Derix and Rahmi Schulz that will be employed in an upcoming ecclesiastical glass commission of mine. The experience was remarkable in so many ways, including being at a world-class glass studio and meeting glass artists Karl Heinz Traut, Stuart Low, Oscar Galvez, Brigid O’Malley, Karl-Martin Hartmann and Johannes Schreiter. Dr. Schreiter was working on a set of windows for the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Heidelberg, Germany. He saw our test panels and said they were right on. Wow!

It doesn’t get any better for an artist than playing directly with color and light. The photograph below shows what glass looks like after you paint it with silver stain (silver-nitrate) and fire it in the kiln. This technique comes from the fourteenth century and produces a range of luminous warm colors from transparent pale yellows to deep ambers. The silver actually enters the glass, staining the glass, and is so beautiful in the way the color holds the sunlight within.

Isenheim Altarpiece

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:56:56 +0000

Fulfilling a 25-year dream, I drove with two friends to Colmar, France to visit the Unterlinden Museum and see Matthias Grünewald’s compelling altarpiece from the early 1500s. My undergraduate painting professor Jay Olson first described this painting to me as the most genuine statement of faith an artist had ever painted. It was always his dream to one day see it. John Berger writes in Keeping a Rendezvous about the consequential brutality of this altarpiece as opposed to most Renaissance art which idealizes the body and reduces violence to a romantic gesture like in a John Wayne or Gary Cooper western movie. With grace and honesty, this work does speak to grevious suffering, redemption and the human condition. The skin of Christ and the gestural emotion conveyed in his hands and feet is so exceptional and direct, that you recognize this is where the immanent does meet the transcendent in paint on canvas.

Walking with Giants

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:29:52 +0000

I was in Denver last week and stopped by the Tattered Cover bookstore on east Colfax Avenue. To my great surprise and delight, two books were featured on the table in front of the Art section. The first was by my favorite writer on art, John Berger, and his classic Ways of Seeing, the other was The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard which has an art installation of mine featured in it! I can’t believe I was displayed there next to John Berger and with Lucy Lippard, two giants indeed!

Beyond Belief

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:00:35 +0000

Beyond Belief: Theoaesthetics of Just Old-Time Religion? has just been published by Pickwick. I have a chapter in this book which I co-authored with Dr. David O’Hara and based on a course we teach together at Augustana College entitled “Visual Culture and the Sacred: Creative Acts of Resistance and Redemption in Art, Film, and New Media.” Another chapter is by Dan Siedell, who should be read if you are interested in the intersection of liturgy, religion, and art.