Kiln Fired Painted Stained Glass set into White Hand-Carved Plaster with Antiqued Wooden Frame.
*Free-standing with lead-tin weighted wooden base included (designed to be viewed from one side only, back view and image of the base are included below).
by Aloria Weaver, 2023
13x21”
This piece won the award for Contemporary Innovation in Stained Glass at the 2023 Mosaic & Glass Arts International Juried Exhibition at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY.
"The Queen of Heaven was an epithet used by many cultures to refer to a sky goddess throughout the ancient Mediterranean and the ancient Near East (Ishtar, Astarte, Inanna, Isis, Nuit, etc.), as well as the Christian Madonna / Mary.
This piece explores the juxtaposition of the Islamic form of stained glass window, the qamariya, with medieval glass painting, a European Christian tradition and representational art. It examines the cultural melding influence of the migration of Islamic culture through Africa and into southern Spain which heralded the European Renaissance.
Using the traditional methods of transferring a design of Islamic geometry and piercing plaster by hand to create a gypsum window grill featuring pieces of colored glass (called qamariyas: moon-like, or shemsiyas: sun-like in Arabic), I incorporate medieval kiln-fired glass painting in order to tell a story, to provoke inquiry, to rekindle meaning.
The dual faces invite polarity: Sun/Moon, open/closed, awake/asleep, conscious/unconscious, divinity/humanity, feminine/masculine. By invoking polarization, non-binary neutrality is generated as a unifying force."
