With willing hands at work on wings, heart takes shape itself

By JO ANNE FLORES EMBLETON

HOLLY LAKE – A leaded-glass window that graces Holy Spirit Church hall is a labor of love built by the local community led by an artist with close ties to the Catholic church.

Eric Hurley, husband of parishioner Linda Hurley, designed the four-foot circular window and led a team of volunteers over several months to produce the piece, called “The Love of the Holy Spirit.”

The window was installed Aug. 19, and is expected to be blessed by Bishop Álvaro Corrada, SJ, during an Oct. 11 confirmation, said Father Ron Diegel, pastor.

The project first took shape about a year ago, when the parish began planning construction of the new hall, Hurley said, recalling a dinner he and his wife had with the priest at which the discussion rolled around to the window.

“Father wondered if I’d be interested, and I said yes,” even though it had been three years since the last glass project he worked, before he and his wife moved to Texas, he said. “But, I kept all my supplies, things I had when we were back in Tennessee.”

The two men discussed different designs, but the inspiration came from a country song called “On the Wings of a Dove” – not the window over the Holy Spirit altar, Hurley admitted.

“When Father showed me a couple of pictures of windows that he liked, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if we could follow the path of the dove’s wing and (show details) like it’s a stop action (image)?’ When I finished the sketch, the wings were (joined together in the shape of) a heart,” he said.

“That was not intentional,” he added. “And if you look right above where the wings meet at the top, there’s an image that looks a lot like a human heart, slightly (tipped) over just like in the human body … it just happened that way.”

Hurley “put several months’ work into the project before we started to put it together,” the priest said. “He asked if anyone wanted to help, saying that they’d be welcome to join in, and we had people from the local Baptist church come help, as well as from one or two other churches.

“But it didn’t really come as a surprise,” Father Diegel said, describing the close relationship the Catholic parish has with two neighboring churches. “It was great to have so many people come together to help under Eric’s guidance.”

Perhaps the most challenging part of the project was to procure mouth-blown glass to design the window.

“My absolute favorite glass in the whole world is Fischer glass from Germany ... it has lots of swags and bubbles, and it (reflects) the most fantastic light in the world,” Hurley said. “When I was researching (resources), I discovered the company had gone out of business.

“But some guy behind me while I was on the computer told me” to look at a local on-line classified ads forum, where he discovered an Athens company that was selling its inventory at discounted prices so they wouldn’t have to move it to their new location, he said.

“Everything was half-price, and I found my Fischer glass,” he said. “A majority of the glass in that window is Fischer glass, though the dove itself isn’t.”

Even with volunteer help, the project took several months to complete.

First, an image of the window was sketched out on paper, Father Diegel said, “and even colored in so that we’d know exactly what piece went where, then Eric taught us how to score and cut glass.

“He was there supervising every little detail … I cut a piece of glass wrong and had to do it over, so I only cut two pieces,” he said, laughing. “Some of the others cut a lot more than I did.”

The effort was a continual one, with people going over to the Hurleys’ house, “working on it a little here, a little there,” Hurley said. “And that was probably the best idea, when you think about it. When my wife and I were first discussing the project, she said (whenever people looked at the finished window) they could say they had a hand in it.”

Once all the pieces were in place, Hurley took over long enough to slip the pieces into lead I-beams so he could solder them into place, a process he was familiar with.

The longest part of the project entailed weatherproofing the glass, “and that’s where all the volunteers’ help came in handy the most (as they cleaned) the lead and glass after that step,” he said.

The window is constructed in 12 sections that can be easily removed from a steel frame whenever repairs are needed.

“We really didn’t know what to expect what the finished version would look like until we put it into place, but it’s beautiful,” Father Diegel said.

Hurley agreed.

“It’s pretty overwhelming to look at; it’s just a wonderful window,” he said. “I named it for for the hearts that showed up in the final design, things that I didn’t (consciously) put in the window. It’s wild beyond belief.”

A firefighter in Farmers Branch, Hurley said he’d never led “this kind of project before, so it’s definitely been a labor of love.”

The last piece he created was in 1980, for a church in Alabama, “but that was when I was trying to make a living from (making art),” he said. “Working on this window has been such a blessing.” o