When artist Tim Carey and Judson Studios won the bid in 2014 to make one of the largest stained-glass windows in the world, it was a coup for Carey and the stained-glass studio the Judson family has run for more than 125 years in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park.
The window, based on Carey’s design, would be magnificent: a 3,400 square-foot work nearly 100 feet wide with 161 individual panels featuring a towering image of Jesus Christ at the center with 100 or so individual figures from the Bible, religious history, and world culture around him.
This was a reputation-making job. Yet there was one little problem: Carey had no idea how to make it.
“I’ve lived my life trusting my gut and my instinct,” said Carey, who lives in South Pasadena. “I’ve done things that I didn’t think I could do. I’ve taken the approach of my favorite author. Ray Bradbury says, ‘Jump off the cliff, and grow your wings on the way down.’”
Carey jumped. David Judson, who represents the fifth-generation of his family to run Judson Studios, held his breath. And documentary filmmaker Justin Monroe, Carey’s neighbor in South Pasadena, turned his camera on what happened next.
The result arrives in the new documentary “Holy Frit,” a beautiful, funny, moving story about a stained glass window, the people who made it, and the Church of the Resurrection, the megachurch in Kansas that commissioned it for its new sanctuary.
“I felt comfortable with it even though it was not easy,” Carey says on a recent video call with Monroe. “I just felt like we were going to figure something out. … I was comfortably uncomfortable, I guess.”
A massive stained-glass window designed by artist Tim Carey for Judson Studios is installed in the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas in the new documentary “Holy Frit.”
(Courtesy of Abramorama)
An offer he couldn’t fuse
The problem Carey faced was that he didn’t really know much about fused glass, a method of making stained glass that allows for painterly, impressionistic, almost abstract art to emerge from the kilns in the studio.
But he knew there was one person in the world who did: Narcissus Quagliata, the man who more or less invented the kind of glass art that Carey needed for the Church of the Resurrection’s window. Carey called, and Quagliata agreed to fly from his home in Mexico City to consult on the project.
Now all the players were in place for the film that had gotten its start when Carey asked his friend and neighbor to make a short promotional movie about Judson Studios to help it stand out in the bidding for which 60 firms around the world took part.
“I reacted with a lot of freakout and passion,” Monroe says of his first encounter with the studio and the beautiful, artisanal work that it made. “I walked in and was just stunned by the place. It’s like you’re walking back in time. I mean, it’s gorgeous, it’s arresting. I knew immediately I wanted to do it.”
The short film soon turned into a feature, with Monroe coming to the studio regularly to check on the progress and panic. And a lot more panic than progress in the first months of the three years allotted for the job to be finished by the time the sanctuary opened on Easter Sunday 2017.
Almost anything that could go wrong did. Quagliata and Carey bickered, the master and student frustrating each other. Judson Studios simply wasn’t big enough to make the panels fast enough, so it opened a second studio in South Pasadena, eating up more time Carey didn’t have.
David Judson and Carey realized their bid wasn’t going to cover the cost of the project and had to go to Kansas to ask for more money. (That actually worked out. The church agreed to an increase for the project that eventually cost about $3.5 million.)
The glass factory in Portland, Oregon, the only one that made the kind of glass the project required, got shut down over environmental concerns. More time slipped away like frit — the finely ground glass used to paint gorgeous glass images — through Carey’s fingers.
Did the window get finished? Yes. And it’s a record-setter, too, as both the largest single-image stained-glass window and largest fused-glass window in the world.
Was it easy? That’s the fun of the film.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton, left, glass artist Tim Carey, center, and David Judson, head of Judson Studios, a stained-glass studio that his family has run for more than 125 years, as seen in the new documentary “Holy Frit.”
(Courtesy of Abramorama)
Frit happens
One of the challenges the film explores is how the project required navigating currents of art, religion and business. Quagliata, and to some degree Carey, felt that art should dictate decisions. David Judson worried about the budget, as did the Rev. Adam Hamilton, who also had the requirements of religion in mind at all times.
Carey says he learned the importance of business in art over the course of the project, and his faith came into sharper focus, too.
“There’s no way to do something like this, especially with 100 figures from the Bible, the amount of time and energy, and not to be affected,” Carey says. “Generally speaking, I am a Christian, and it’s impossible to not have all of that swirling around you.
“I’m just happy that it didn’t manifest into any sort of negativity,” he says of the stresses the project created. “Not only from Narcissus, and the way he surprised me with his humility, but the church, and the way they surprised me with how down to earth they were, and how generous and really welcoming.”
The title — “Holy Frit” — is a playful adaptation of a common expletive, one of many heard in the film as Carey struggles to make it all work. For Monroe, that makes the movie even more powerful.
“I found it really interesting that there was this balance between the reverent and the irreverent,” he says. “I found that just beautiful and wonderful, because humanity is messy, and I think religious people or non-religious people, we’re all messy.
“When a person is honest about (faith) and F-bombs are coming out at the same time, that’s me, man,” Monroe says. “I thought that tension was really wonderful.”
Glass artists Tim Carey, left, and Narcissus Quagliata, look up at the massive stained-glass window they made for the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas in the new documentary “Holy Frit.”
(Courtesy of Abramorama)
Jesus is just all right
The middle third of the window, with the three-story-high image of Christ, went up first. Carey and Monroe say they had opposite reactions to seeing that, and later the completed window, for the first time.
“I’ll tell you what I felt was relief,” Carey says. “That’s how I feel with a lot of my work. I don’t become ebullient or gushy about it. I let everybody else do the feeling and the praising and whatever they’re going to do.
“For me, it’s a job,” he says. “And I felt like, ‘OK, it’s gonna work. Jesus’s head isn’t too small. His expression is right. His hands are right. It’s not too bright up there.’ So for me, it’s just like, ‘Check, check, check, check.’”
Monroe, in contrast, is a gusher.
“Man, my wife will tell you: I tear up a lot,’” he says. “So I felt it all, and I’ll tell you, in that moment when the middle was in, I’m going, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a masterpiece.’
Glass artists Tim Carey, left, and Narcissus Quagliata discuss work on the massive fused-glass window they created for a megachurch in Kansas in the new documentary “Holy Frit.” An artist’s rendering of the window can be seen on the wall behind them.
(Courtesy of Abramorama)
A glass act
A year or so after the window was finished, Carey left Judson Studios, opening his own studio to be both businessman and artist. After several years in Compton, he moved the studio home to South Pasadena.
“One thing I learned about myself a long time ago is that I’m always going to be a lot harder on myself,” Carey says. “So I would talk to Justin and say, ‘That makes me look terrible.’ And he would say, ‘No, no, it doesn’t. You think that because it’s you.’
“So I have learned to take a more objective view about it,” he says. “I look at myself as a character in a film, and not me. So I’m OK if I have to take one for the team and make a fool of myself, and show my disgusting car with my Jack in the Box wrappers. My mom may not like it, but whatever.”
Today, Carey is making glass art from his original ideas and commissions alike. He and Monroe are still collaborating on glass-art-related projects, too. They have a company called Vitreonics, with a YouTube channel of the same name, and make funny, educational, and informative videos. They’re also working to develop a TV show based on fused glass and glass art.
“We keep rolling the dice,” Monroe says. “How often do you get to help usher in a brand-new medium? I mean, it’s really Tim and Narcissus who are the only ones doing it like this. They’re doing it like paintings in glass. How cool is that?”
“Holy Frit” is now making the rounds of the film festival circuit. No screening has yet been scheduled in San Diego, but to see a trailer adn learn more visit holyfrit.com/screenings.
Larsen writes for the Southern California News Group.
