Commemorative Window

Abstract

A large (30’x12’) window in Bethania Chapel, Bethesda, North Wales, commissioned in memory of the 1900-1903 Slate Quarrymen’s Strike in Bethesda. The final window design was based upon ideas and images that address the village’s essential relationship to the landscape and its slate bedrock. Central feature of the work was a window within the window, placed upon a slate stone windowsill. The piece is constructed of three layers of antique glass, enamelled glass and blown glass. For this project, Bird-Jones researched the artistic translation of collective social memory. She conducted a significant collaborative inquiry with community members and school groups during her residency to understand local memory and contemporary narrative, as a basis for developing artistic and technical plans for the window. Extensive social, historical and visual research was conducted. Discovery of visual as well as social remnants of the strike directly influenced the design of the window. Images in texts etched into slate, in homes, the public space and in the landscape, and the particular weather and light qualities of the nearby mountains informed the transparency and opacity of the window design. Experience of the enduring social split following the strike led the design’s conceptual content, the inscriptions of 1000 villagers on the window, a process symbolically bringing together families split for a century. Bird-Jones worked with 3 German fabrication studios running experiments with technique, materials and processes before developing sample panels for the window.