State-Journal.com - Through the stained glass

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Photo By Kelly Mackey

Christopher Cecil cleans and inspects one of his mixed medium pieces at Completely Kentucky.

Photo By Kelly Mackey

Christopher Cecil puts together a piece for charity auction. Christopher has been working with stained glass for about 30 years.

Photo By Kelly Mackey

Cooper Cecil, 9, Christopher's son, looks at some pieces Christopher started working on and never finished inside Christopher's studio in the basement of their home.

"Frankfort Faces" is a series that highlights people from within the Frankfort and Franklin County community. Each feature follows one of the city's most unique personalities and includes a story, photos and video, which can be found by clicking the TV icon attached to the story online at state-journal.com.

He was just looking for any job to make a little money when he found art at age 15.

Now for Christopher Cecil, 30 years later, his stained-glass art is not about the money.

It's about the soul " and it has to be etched deeply in the center to talk nonstop for hours about stained glass the way he does.

Ann Wingrove, owner of Completely Kentucky on Broadway, says she could sell a lot more of his stained-glass work if she had it on the shelves.

But Christopher isn't a mass producer. His part-time business " Glass Action Studio in the basement of his Indian Hills home " is more about quality than quantity, Ann says.

A former state government social worker, Christopher now works full time as a judicial education specialist for the Administrative Office of the Courts.

Ann has two large stained-glass windows created by Christopher in the back of her shop.

"It's a nice focal piece when you come into the store," Wingrove says. "I like the way he uses glass in a nontraditional way, making some of it three dimensional."

In the colorful glass at Completely Kentucky, Christopher has depicted two store shelves holding jars of jelly and candy, a teddy bear, candles in holders, a molasses jug, bottles of olive oil and a kitchen utensils holder with a real whisk and basting brush between a rolling pin and serving spoon.

Also, real antique glass plates are on a top shelf next to etched glass cups. A three-dimensional birdhouse sits on another shelf. The molasses jar and olive oil bottles have real corks.

Ann loves Christopher's work so much she commissioned him to make four rectangular stained-glass windows over doors in her 175-year-old home.

In the 1990s, "when I first started making some things I thought were unusual I took them down to Completely Kentucky and showed Ann, and she was pretty fascinated," Christopher says.

"She let me bring in a couple of windows to display. When she started talking about pricing she said she lets the artist determine how much to ask for."

That was the first time he had been referred to as an artist and he liked hearing it.

"It surprised me," he says. "I thought it was neat."

The youngest of 13 children, Christopher says "there was no concept of an allowance for doing household chores" when he was growing up in Louisville. So wanting to earn money, he applied for a job at a neighborhood grocery at 15.

"I kept going back every week but there were no openings," he says.
Then one week at the grocery store he learned Fenestra Studio " making stained-glass windows " was hiring.

"Guys that owned it lived in our neighborhood near Iroquois Park."

Christopher, a student at DeSales High School, rode a bus downtown and started a minimum-wage job after getting a worker's permit to be legally employed.

"The artist, Robert Markert, did a lot of amazing stained-glass windows. We also made faceted, thick church windows. With that glass you actually cut it with a stone saw and chiseled the sides to get the facets."

For three years his job was "mindless " cementing and waterproofing windows with putty. But I was watching how everything was made. Then after three years I got to build the windows and cut the glass."

In school he says he always loved art, "but only took the mandatory art classes.
"I was the only one in my family who had the opportunity to go to kindergarten. That was a big deal. During art you got to wear your dad's shirt on backwards and do finger-painting and get it everywhere.

At age 5, I made a glued sand painting and thought that was the greatest thing."
The first time he worked with glass was in the sixth grade.

"Ironically, the owners of Fenestra Studio brought in a bucket of scrap glass to make art projects," Christopher says. "Today I can't imagine what a school would do if someone came walking in with a bucket of scrap glass.

"But they let us go through it and I made a little mosaic of a clock."

As a high school senior, "I convinced my teacher to let me do a stained glass project. I designed my first window when I was 18 " a rainbow of clouds."

And that was the last window he created until 1993, "the most challenging year of my life. I spiraled into a clinical depression. As a result of that I had to rethink everything in my life.

"The three things that brought me peace and comfort at that time, as clich as it may sound, were God, family and art. I didn't intentionally turn to art for solace. It was a natural instinct."

He says when he started thinking about art, his "troubled mind exploded with beautiful colors. I had dreams about cathedrals filled with astonishing stained-glass windows. I've heard you dream in black and white but these dreams were in full color."

Stained-glass basics never change, he says.

"The materials are predictable and forgiving. When I break a piece of glass while I am cutting it's very frustrating. But I don't throw it away. It usually turns out to be the perfect piece for a new project.

"Maybe that's how God is working in my life. I mess up and he keeps me hanging around until I figure how he is going to use me in another project."

Christopher says "commitment to family is the only true measure of success that matters."

He and his wife, Carol, have four children " Ronnie, 28, Billy, 27, Elaine, 12 and Cooper, 9. He also has 38 nieces and nephews and 40 great-nieces and nephews.

Christopher and Angel Negra " both members of Good Shepherd Church " worked together to make a stained glass window of "Our Lady of Guadalupe," which sits on a stone base in a meditation garden at the Leestown Road church. It was a gift to the parish.

Besides creating art, Christopher enjoys teaching a class on stained glass.
"I teach about four or five. It's two hours a week for eight weeks and the cost is $150. Students learn the whole process " from design and glass cutting to glazing. I provide all supplies and tools.

"They get to draw their own pattern and make a window up to 18 square inches. They leave the class with a window that is the value of what they have spent."