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Stained Glass artist
Jay Grooters has completed his most
challenging work to date, and reflects on
creating a legacy.
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Jay Grooters has been
doing stained glass pieces for over 30
years. The mostly self-taught artist
recently completed his largest work to date:
A window depicting the Virgin Mary in front
of a meadow and Longs Peak.
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Over 1,100 separate
pieces of hand-cut glass, countless hours at
work and a lot of planning went into the
stained glass window depicting the Virgin
Mary at the Our Lady of the Mountains
Catholic Church.
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Jay Grooters is more
than a little happy about how the finished
product has turned out. While Grooters has
been creating stained glass pieces for 30
years or so, this was a foray into the
unknown for him.
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"The most
difficult part of the piece was her
face," said Grooters. "If you look
at her face, there are two pieces there. Her
mouth is cut out with no break lines coming
out of the sides. I ground that out. Years
ago we couldn't do that, but there are new
tools now. Her forehead and her nose is one
piece and the lower half of her face is one
other piece. Trying to get that without
breaking it was hard. I wanted to have as
few lines in her face as possible. I didn't
know if I could pull it off, but it
worked."
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Grooters chalked up
early childhood experiences to his affection
for Ecclasiastical stained glass. He is the
son of a Methodist minister, and remembers
being moved not only by the work in the
church of his childhood, but a special
window in the family home that captivated
him.
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"I remember
there was a simple beveled window in our
house in Longmont that would catch the sun.
The light would refract and you'd catch
these colors. It fascinated me as a kid and
then as I got older and got married and we
moved to Salt lake City, I always wanted a
stained glass lamp, but couldn't afford one,
so I took a class to learn how to do it. The
guy who taught the class really wasn't very
good, but I learned where to find supplies
and I found a really good book on it. So I
basically learned from a book and trial and
error. I discovered I had a knack for it.
I've always liked jigsaw puzzles and that's
basically what this is .. a glass jigsaw
puzzle."
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Grooters was approached last
summer by Father Gregory of
the church and Rose Mary
Gergen of Burlington, Colo.,
to begin work on the window.
"She wanted this
particular representation of
Mary and Father Gregory and
I met several times to see
how we wanted things to turn
out. We wanted some flowers
and meadows and mountains,
of course. We went through
about 5 different designs
before we got to exactly
what we wanted. I have a
program that is for
designing stained glass
windows on the computer.
Frankly, I don't know how I
would do this the old way,
making a design and
transferring it down on the
pattern. It took 52 sheets
of paper when I printed out
the full size design. It
gives me a way to show
people approximately how it
is going to look. The colors
aren't exactly true colors,
because you won't be able to
tell that until you get the
glass in there, but it's an
approximation. We started
talking about the window
maybe in July," he
said. "But my wife
Fran and I run the Alpine
Trail Ridge Inn, so summers
aren't really free for me to
be devoting that kind of
time to anything."
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So Grooters had his
winter project all lined up for himself, and
although he didn't log his exact hours to
keep track of how long the project took him,
being absorbed in the work made the time
pass quickly.
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"I'd go down to work on
it in my studio at about
seven at night and then
before I knew it, it would
be two in the morning,"
he said. "Sometimes I'd
work on it all day, but
usually evening was when I
did most of the work."
Grooters designed the window
to be easy to move. Despite
its size, it only took
around a half an hour to
install.
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"The reason I
did it in that many panels was to keep them
down to a size that was easy to handle, and
so that it could be taken out should they
expand the church some years down the
road," he said. "It was
interesting because I had this all put
together in my garage and had planned on
taking everything out and bringing the frame
in and installing the frame, and then
getting some scaffolding and intalling it.
But it wasn't very heavy, and I could move
it around fairly easily. So I went upstairs
and got the bathroom scales and brought it
down to my studio and it weighed 130 pounds.
The scary part was packing it well enough to
put it in my trailer and get it down a bumpy
dirt road and getting it here without
breaking it," he laughed. "It came
out fine. We just lifted it up into place.
In half an hour it went from a big plain
window to the installed window.
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So far the response
to his creation has been nothing but
positive, and Grooters is humbled at the
feedback he's received directly and
indirectly.
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"There was a
meeting happening here at the church and
there were a group of people in the office
meeting room," he explained. "They
came out about a half hour after we had
installed the window and without exception,
they put their hand over their heart and
said "Oh, my." We haven't had any
negative comments or anything like that. We
have more windows lined up for the church,
too, but for the moment the windows are on
hold until they know what they're going to
do with the building. Father's idea is that
the whole inside of the church should have
some kind of aspect of Mary's life
represented in the windows. Father Gregory
has a very good sense of design. He's very
artistic in his own way. I didn't know some
of the protocol about what colors the
Catholic Church uses, and he kept me in line
with that. He's also a very good marketer -
he's got the fellow that has the Chocolate
Drop who donates these chocolate bars.
Father had him put the picture of Mary on
the chocolate bars, and people will buy up
all the Mary bars and leave the other
ones."
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Grooters has printed
up some 8.5"x11" and
13"x19" prints of the window and
donated them to the church to sell to use
for their building fund.
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"I'm not a
parishioner, but my wife is," said
Grooters. "I'm not a member of the
church, but I'm active in helping out here.
I'm just trying to return some of the value
that they've given me."
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Grooters was a member
of the National Speakers Association and the
Colorado Speakers Association for 9 years,
and it is a time in his life that he
recalled with a mixture of fondness and
frustration in his voice.
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"I learned a lot and
heard some tremendous
speakers," he
explained. "I was at a
point in my life where I
really needed that positive
input. It was life changing
for me. But at one point I
finally realized that I
didn't really have a
message. If I didn't feel
like I had a message, I
felt like I really shouldn't
go around speaking. Well,
ironically, now
I realise that I do
have a message and it's that
'I speak with my hands
and not with my voice.'
Instead of affecting
people with my speeches and
presentations, I'm leaving
something that will affect
people for years long after
I'm gone. This window speaks
for me. Hundreds of people
see it every week, thousands
every year. There are some
people who say 'that's
really nice,' and then other
people who say that it
touches them to their core.
It has made a change in
their life. To me that's
what it's all about. It's
doing something that will
positively affect people and
help them through whatever
they're going through or
help them through a
transition in their lives.
It's a fun medium. I enjoy
working in it and I like it
because I have results. It's
not like writing. I can see
something tangible and it is
as though I'm leaving a
legacy.
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Grooters is no
stranger to the keyboard and the perils of
writer's block. Some years ago, he wrote a
book of Story/Poems titled, "Looking
in My Mirror Backwards, Reflections at
Mid-Life," where he candidly
and frankly speaks of some of the joys and
tribulations that his life has dealt him,
and the thoughts and feelings that arose in
him while he reflected on where he wanted
the rest of his life to head.
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Jay Grooters'
stained glass window
of the Virgin Mary
contains over 1,100
separate pieces of
hand-cut glass. The
Virgin's rosary is
made of glass beads
that he attached to
the window.
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"I
have some books that we put into
the motel rooms as room copies,
and it's interesting to see the
comments that we get from that
sometimes. Most people don't say
much, but once in a while
someone will come in and say
that it really touched them.
It's a little scary putting that
book out there, because it does
expose myself emotionally. But
you have to do that kind of
thing in order to be able to
reach out and touch people. I
hope that people feel that way
after spending time looking at
this stained glass. I'm looking
foward to whatever happens. I'd
like to keep going on the
project because I'm 61 right
now, and hopefuly I've got
another 15 years or so in me and
that I'll be able to keep
working on this project until I
can't anymore."
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Grooters did the
majority of the stained glass windows in the
Allenspark Church, and some restoration work
in a Methodist church in Longmont. It seems
he's cut out for church glass, but he does
other pieces as well.
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"I also do
smaller pieces, things that you can hang in
your window. Since I take inspiration from
the area, I've done stained glass of
wildlife, flowers, mountains ... that kind
of thing. In the past, most of my work has
been for individuals, but I really hope to
keep challenging myself to do larger and
larger pieces. I'm so pleased with how this
one turned out, it really has been
extraordinary, and I really like the idea of
how many people's lives it will be a part of
in the years to come."
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Grooters' book and
stained glass can be viewed at his website:
www.urbanrancher.com
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