Frederick A. McDonald was a true-blue shepherd during his 18 months as an Army chaplain in World War II. Traveling through Europe with a group commanded by Gen. Omar Bradley, the Episcopal priest gave last rites, opened closed synagogues and collected pieces of stained glass from ruined cathedrals. He mailed the shards to his mother back home in Seattle to save as relics of horror and hope.
For more than 50 years this broken mosaic rainbow remained in envelopes and shoe boxes under McDonald’s bed. Its destiny changed dramatically when McDonald’s story was relayed in 1999 to Armelle Le Roux, a stained-glass designer and restorer born in a village in Brittany.
The ambitious Oakland resident spent the next seven years working with McDonald and fellow artisans, transforming those glass remains into sculptural phoenixes.
“Remembered Light,” Le Roux’s project, illuminates the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. The 25 works, 14 created or co-created by Le Roux, turn the chapel-like room into a sparkling shrine of mortality and morality, salvage and salvation.
Each of the objects hangs on a handsome steel easel. Each has a McDonald story about the place he gathered the glass fragments. Most are vividly personal and creative.
Le Roux’s depiction of St. John’s Church in London, where McDonald worshipped often in 1933, includes a leaded shard placed above the envelope in which he placed the St. John’s pieces. The bomb-shaped fragment appears to attack the envelope, which has a Hollywoodish ad for a hair net made from real synthetic hair.
Some artists have McDonald’s deeply spiritual commitment. Considering the shards as thorns, Narcissus Quagliata placed 33 pieces — one for every year of Christ’s life — from a French cathedral on a crucifixion crown. Set into an incendiary, blood-red backdrop, backlit by a leaded Gothic window, it dazzles.
Not every work is a window panel. Misty Gamble’s charming ceramic statue of St. Bartholomew opens a billowing white robe to reveal a chest with three drawers, one containing an illuminated shard from Frankfurt Cathedral. She references the Frankfurt sacristan who opened a drawer to show McDonald the saint’s alleged scalp.
Not all the shards come from holy places. A molten orange-red sheet made by Le Roux features fragments salvaged from Hitler’s mountain retreat. “We felt that making Hitler real outweighed our discomfort and distaste,” says the artist in a wall text, “because Hitler and the evil he represents are real, and a continuing threat to our world.” She makes the threat more real by arranging the shards like a waterfall of knifing tears.
Fascinating facts are scattered through the show like — well, like shards. When he wasn’t collecting glass relics or giving communion, McDonald censored soldiers’ mail.
McDonald died at age 93 in 2002, four years before the “Remembered Light” works were first exhibited. His namesake foundation in San Francisco is raising money to install them permanently in the interfaith chapel at the Presidio, the Bay Area national park in a former American and Spanish military headquarters. There, in a hillside Spanish Mission building near Fort Mason, McDonald’s first priestly post, they will illuminate his faith in everlasting peace.
“Remembered Light,” through June 15, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, 220 S. 34th St., between Walnut and Spruce streets, Philadelphia. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday 215-898-2083, www.upenn.edu/ARG, www.rememberedlight.org., www.interfaith-presidio.org.
Recycling redux
The Cedar Crest College campus is an arboretum. Today it will gain another green place: a juried exhibit of works made by students with trash.
“Go Green” contains a flower arrangement created from syringe parts, a planter from a broken wine glass and disposable baby sandals from newspaper. Works are displayed on cardboard shelves and promoted by e-mail, not by postcard.
None of the objects is more than 125 square inches. Each is useful. Three will receive awards today for manipulation, reuse, and reuse of most neglected waste.
The show/contest was inspired by a workshop led by Linda Weintraub, an eco-art expert who directed the gallery at Muhlenberg College. Publisher of the college series “Avant-Guardians: Textlets in Art and Ecology,” she asked students to make the common peanut more personal and meaningful. Participants created abstract sculptures, turned shells into spoons and ground nuts and hulls into a mortar-like paste.
The “Go Green” goal is “to reconsider that material we just toss out, to give it more value in creative ways,” says Jill Odegaard, a sculptor who chairs Cedar Crest’s art department. “Once we look at our trash differently, we look at it more responsibly. And also to have fun. There isn’t this preciousness when we think about art made from garbage.”
“Go Green,” today through May 12, gallery, Tompkins College Center, Cedar Crest College, Allentown. Related events: reception 5:30-6:30 p.m. today, North Annex, Tompkins; “Contemporary Art and the Primordial Sun,” lecture by show juror Linda Weintraub, 7 p.m. today, 1867 Room, Tompkins. Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. 610-740-3791, www.cedarcrest.edu.
geoff.gehman@mcall.com
610-820-6516
