Local artist Vicky Walker sells stained glass creations at her City Market stall, Creative On Demand. (Danielle McCreadie)
A piece of Saint John’s history is being turned into pieces of art.
Saint John artist Vicky Walker is re-purposing the stained glass windows from Gothic Arches to make ornaments, wall hangings and jewelry.
Walker says she just wants to give back to the community.
“There was a lot of sentiment out there about making sure that it was reclaimed or salvaged in some form or another. No piece is too small. I was putting pieces in my pocket or sweeping them up and putting them in buckets, so we have a big inventory,” she said.
Walker and her partner Stephen Chase say they have managed to salvage 400 square feet of glass from the building.
“It was the eleventh hour,” she said, when a group dedicated to preserving work inside the church reached out to her. “I was totally unaware this was going to fall into my lap…but we got there as soon as we could and just dug right in.”
Local artist Vicky Walker wants to turn the stained glass into ornaments, window hangings and jewelry. (Danielle McCreadie)
She says the windows, which are typically installed in wood frames, were in stone instead, making the excavation project a lot harder.
“We went out and got some stone chisels and brought our own scaffolding and just went at it.”
As for the condition of the glass, Walker says its “pretty grimy”
“We have to take the cement off it, and there’s a film on the inside that you take steel wool to, but other than that, the condition the glass is in is great, it’s what the glass was in that was pretty deteriorated.”
But, Walker says she has been working hard to preserve it.
“I’ve been dismantling a lot of the windows because they were in a pretty rough state of disrepair. Some of them were literally glued together in plexi-glass, but they’re jewels none the same,” she said.
Walker says she’s been working with and collecting stained glass for many years, but this project was something she’s never done before.
“Not to this level” she said. “I mean, we were up 30 or 40 feet, you can’t just bring these windows out. We were gingerly passing them down.”
The windows at the Gothic Arches church were the largest stained glass installation east of Montreal, something Walker didn’t find out until the pieces were taken out. She says she would’ve felt a lot more pressure had she known.
Walker is already working on a number of collaborations with the stained-glass, which she sells at her City Market stall ‘Creative On Demand.’
“I consider myself a conduit. I’ve had people come to me with all kinds of ideas, and I’ve been putting their names in a book. After the holidays I’ll reach out and we can collaborate. I’ll have a better idea of what pieces I have available and we can have them made into some kind of memento,” she said.
“I’ve given a couple of panels to a local woman who is going to offer a workshop and you can make a stained glass ornament from the Gothic Arches glass, so it’s kind of giving back two-fold,” she said.
Walker says while she has managed to find some beauty in the destruction of a century-old historic building, she hopes the city will put more effort into protecting its heritage properties.
“I want Saint John to be a role model of what to do, instead of what not to do.”
