AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

2018 in Review

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Its been a big year. The continuing project for new stained glass windows in the clerestory of St Peter's Anglican Church at East Maitland, NSW for which I installed two windows in 2016 and two in 2017, required three windows this year.

I did manage to squeeze in a solo exhibition at m2 Gallery in Surry Hills mid-September, just prior to the late October installation at East Maitland. I was rather desperate to exhibit as this was my first solo show in over a decade. I am pleased it was so well received, despite falling on the same weekend as Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks.

The beginning of the year saw the team rebuild and install 12x decorative leadlight windows from the Oxford Room of St Mathias' Anglican Church in Paddington, having excavated the original windows the previous December. These leadlights were in the worst condition I have ever come across, and everyone in the Parish community was thrilled with the result.

With the St Matthias project underway I was concentrating on completing a new window for Wesley Uniting Church in Forrest, ACT with a very specific (and consequently rather difficult) brief. Featuring an angel bearing a lit candle, it was installed end of January after a long gestation.

Also in Jan/Feb I made a residential fanlight for a couple in Newtown which featured a lyrebird. They own a bush block up on the Central Coast of NSW frequented by lyrebirds and wanted to make special note of that in the Newtown property.

As soon as St Matthias was completed mid-February, the studio got underway with restoration of two lancets from a 5x lancet set of ornamental stained glass in what is now the Chinese Christian Church in Milson's Point. Completed in 1888, this handsome Victorian Gothic building was formerly a Congregational Church and the windows, on the point of collapse until we got them out, are quite pretty.

While all that was going on, I got away for two weeks in April/May with my boyfriend to Vietnam, travelling to Saigon, Da Nang and Nha Trang; it was my first trip to an Asian country and I had a great time.

So yeah, 2018 was a big year, finishing on a busy session of installations for a residential client in Balmain, restoration of a John Ashwin window from St James Catholic Church in Glebe and removal of the Main Hall windows at St Matthias Paddington, to be rebuilt early in 2019. There were various other smaller jobs throughout the year as well, and in amongst it all, slowly but surely my friend Jon Doe and I made progress on a collaborative work which will be constructed in January for the exhibition titled INTERCHANGE at M16 Gallery in Griffith, ACT in February 2019. This exhibition will be a satellite show concurrent with the Ausglass/NZGAS CoLab Conference in Whanganui, NZ

Solo Exhibition @ m2 Gallery

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UNPUBLISHED [and rarely seen] WORKS

THURSDAY 13th- MONDAY 17th SEPTEMBER 2018

Apart from a small two-person show at Glass Artists/Gauge Gallery in Glebe in 2016, this is my first solo for many years. The exhibition will comprise Works on Paper, Collage/Assemblage and Stained Glass.

Technically many of the works are not "Unpublished" at all, since they
feature on this website. But they have not been exhibited in a physical gallery before, hence the title. Some have had one or two outings in the past couple of decades, in group shows around the country, and three damaged works have been especially restored for this show. There will be one completely new work in stained glass.

m2 Gallery is located at 450 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, not far up the hill from my workshop at Central. It is a well-managed hire-space that has featured some excellent artists over the past few years. I will be in attendance for the 5x days of the show so if you are in Sydney please make an effort to drop in between 9am - 6.30 pm Thursday- Monday.

A New Residential window

XX Mon. YYYY

When offered the opportunity of designing a widow featuring dolphins, I admit I hesitated. Could I achieve something fresh here? Is it even possible to avoid cliche with this subject matter? The clients had something quite specific in mind, an image of a window found on the internet, one which was quite well designed in fact. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the process and I think I managed to make something worthwhile: you be the judge.

But Wait, There's More!

XX Mon. YYYY

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the studio has been insanely busy over the past 6x months or so. Yesterday I installed the last of this year's projects, a three-panelled bathroom window for a luxurious private residence in Sutton, NSW.

The beautiful finishes throughout the home include recycled timber, brick paving for interior flooring along with sanded beech in a herringbone pattern, cor-ten steel balustrades seen in the image above and exposed rammed earth walls. The client is a design consultant and approached me with the idea of making a window comprising slices of agate. But she also had an entirely different concept of a mechanical grid made up of a multitude of colours.

I suggested combining these two elements as a design solution: the organic crystal forms are thus suspended in the geometric grid.

New Installations

XX Mon. YYYY

Over the past 6 months my major commission has been two double window sets for St Peter's Anglican Church in East Maitland. With the assistance of Ron Jensen of Heritage Stained Glass, New Lambton, his off-sider Anthony and my assistant Hannah, we got these four windows and their quatrafoils installed over four days last week.

Two weeks prior to this installation, I completed the installation of a pair of stained glass door panels to a family vault in Frenchs Forrest Cemetery.

The brief for this project called for renderings of the Coat of Arms of the City of Lombardo, Italy and St Aloysius School in North Sydney. I took as my lead the bold deco design of the facade, echoing the bronze, brass and black granite.

VIBE: Jeffrey Hamilton & Bek Rice @ Gauge Glass Artists Gallery

XX Mon. YYYY

Just opened last weekend: an exhibition of 5x of my works alongside a collection of pastel drawings and prints by Bek Rice featuring the local Glebe and Leichhardt areas. The link is the vibrancy and colour of the works, echoing the vibe of the area.

The Director of Glass Artists Gallery, Maureen Cahill recently moved the glass exhibition area up one level while maintaining the street level as an exhibition space available for hire. She will also curate occasional shows there herself (such as this one).

Sunday 6th July saw a good number of people arrive at the gallery to join in conversation with myself and Bek Rice. The Director Maureen Cahill firstly introduced us both and explained some historical associations and the rationale for the show. This was Bek's first time speaking to a group about her work but she handled it with aplomb, clearly demonstrating the passion that she has for her practice.

After some questions I took the floor with a brief background to my life as an artist, followed by some detailed analysis of the works on display and the making processes involved. There was some lively discusion, with some interesting questions and comments form the audience- many of whom were of course themselves arts practitioners.

Stained Glass by Anzolo Fuga @ Scallabrini Village, Austral

XX Mon. YYYY

Earlier last year I had the opportunity to visit the Scallabrini Village @ Austral in Sydney's south west. The village is a retirement centre catering in particular to the Italian community. The chapel appears to have been built in the 1960s or '70s and has some very fine stained glass by Anzolo Fuga, who it seems was a glass designer for Arte Vetraria Muranese, Italy. The windows are very distinctive and unlike anything I have seen in Australia- perhaps the closest would be the work of Jean Orval in Victoria. Like much of Orval's work, Anzolo's windows still have a freshness today

With Light in Mind

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Greville Wilton, of Golden Wattle Studios in Glen Innes, NSW, would be the first to declare he is no artist. He is an excellent leadlighter. But making that statement denies the brilliant design skills on display in this exhibition. Together with Tanja Robertson-Cunninghame they make an awesome team. This whole exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery is predicated on close collaboration. Tanja has produced an enormous body of exciting new canvases referencing the Australian modernist abstract canon and it is these which form the basis of the 16x stained glass panels on display.

Greville's design and engineering skills also came to the fore in setting up the show and making full use of the space available in the atrium of the gallery's main entrance. A welded steel frame is attached to the ceiling and from this the stained glass works are suspended on steel cable. Each panel is cleverly framed in a welded steel frame comprising a fin of metal into which the lead came is inserted: this provides an essential foil of darkness to separate the glass from its background and allow it to live in the ambient space.

I particularly enjoyed the placement of stained glass panels in the stairwell and installed over the glass of the back exit. And the surprise pieces in the balconies also delight the senses. All in all a great exhibition, one which should raise the profile of Golden Wattle immensely but also go a long way to furthering the somewhat marginalised artform of contemporary stained glass.

Two New Works

XX Mon. YYYY

I've been extremely busy over the last few months, undertaking a specialist cleaning project and assessment of stained glass at St Mary's Catholic Church, Concord, pushing on with a new window for St Edmund's Anglican Church in Maroubra and developing a design for St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Bowral (see progress shots in my ABOUT page) However during this time I have also managed to complete two new abstract stained glass panels.

Splash Dance is a richly textured work, as much for the play of texture as the necessity for privacy: it is window to a toilet which backs onto a courtyard used for entertaining. And naturally some ventilation is also required. The stained glass replaces a pair of double-hung timber sashes which had a fixed vent installed at the top. I proposed to the client dispensing with the vent and instead incorporating expanded metal mesh within the artwork. This idea appealed immensely and allowed me to 'give vent' to my desire for found object: there are antique pieces of Meccano, metal mesh and a stainless steel drainage sieve leaded into the work which all provided a degree of ventilation as well as playfulness. The residence is located in Darlinghurst, NSW.

Lyrical Work

Also relying heavily on found object, Lyrical Work is to be installed early November in a front door of a residential extension at Weston Creek, ACT. No ventilation holes in this piece, as outside temperatures around Canberra can fall below freezing at times, but a similar need for privacy and so much use of heavily textured and obscured or 'mechanical' glasses.

The lyricism of this piece is derived from classical string and piano works- Vaughan Williams, Debussy, Liszt and (a particular request of the client's) Scottish Airs. So as the design developed I found a need to incorporate floral and naturalistic elements: the painted acanthus leaf from a Church window, a treasured remnant of one of my painted rondels, some pressed "flannel flower" glass. Also there is quite a lot of iridised glass employed to enliven the work at night. A similar approach was used in Splash Dance, with the iridising both inside and outside.

Nov 10th: I've just returned to Sydney after installing the door panel yesterday. While the install didn't quite go according to plan, I have to say I'm very impressed with the quality of the timber joinery by Gino Monteleone of Select Custom Joinery in Hall, ACT. In fact the whole extension is quite impressive in its detail and finish. Its being built by Canberra firm ABC Constructions

Wamboin Entryway

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As well as window to the guest bathroom, fronting the approach to the new house, Ruth and Steve Lambert also commissioned me to design a three-light door and sidelights to the entrance. Ruth wanted soemthing with high impact, providing a real 'wow' factor, nd chose Lambert's mouthblown glass to fill the sidelights.

Thanks to Greg Piper for the beaut photos: I asked him to stop by on the return journey from the Ausglass Conference in Wagga Wagga where he delivered a paper on the merits of good photography. Wamboin is located between Canberra and Bungendore: from Wagga you can drive across country through Queanbeyan. Greg has been photographing my installations for many years now; I'm extremely happy with his professional approach and his attention to detail. He's prepared to go the extra distance to produce the best results.

While this is very much an abstract work there is substantial reference to landscape, in particular the bush surrounding the house and the wider environment. The interesting angles of the architecture and the architectural finishes were also considered in the design of the glass for the door.