Dr Bronwyn Hughes, stained glass artist and historian
Being creative can be difficult if I approach a project intellectually, but then let go of the idea and let the art speak to me, become a conduit, become reflective and contemplative. This also happens when I write, I can get stuck but trust that something meaningful will come. I watched the stained glass windows while at church when I was a child. I assumed the windows were ‘old’ but they were in fact ‘new’. Eyes were known as the window of the soul so craftsmen made the eyes of stained glass images larger. The windows live in the light, illuminate, narrates and alters the light that comes into the church – this art dies in the dark. Trinity chapel was built at the same time as the war broke out so it memorialises some students and staff who fought. Plans changed to incorporate imagery of “warrior” saints over the next twenty years. The last panel, the crucifixion, went up once the second war had started. These windows became memorials of prayer to visit where there was no body and no grave of loved ones lost. Good, one hundred years on, to still gather here.
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