was commissioned by St. Agnes Catholic Church, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for their new church (completed in 2008 to replace historic St. Agnes as the parish’s primary sanctuary). The drawings depict a procession of saints, some of them well-known and others anonymous. The figures will be etched onto eight sliding glass panels. Each panel is 9 feet 4” high; together the panels form a screen of glass which spans a width of 30 feet.

The screen of glass is designed to function as the left wall of the narthex (at the entrance to the church), and the life size figures etched onto the panel are shown moving through the narthex toward the sanctuary. They offer a visual invitation to contemporary worshippers to join them. There is a small day chapel on the other side of the glass screen; one of the panels opens as a door from the narthex into the chapel. But when the parish wishes to create a larger gathering space the glass panel can be slid out of the way and stacked away in storage.

A committee of 12 parishioners worked with me, supervising the selection of saints and the design of the images. They first decided on a list of saints who are significant to the parish. These were drawn from scripture, from church history, from Shepherdstown’s past, and from the story of St. Agnes parish. After the committee approved a small sketch (with each panel only 12” high), I drew the figures in pencil on sheets of paper cut to one half the final size of the glass. After the committee gave these drawings final approval I transferred the images to architectural vellum, again cut to one-half size, and drew the final images in ink. These images have been scanned, doubled in size and will be used to etch the glass panels. Fabrication of the glass is scheduled for fall, 2009 and the panels are slated to be installed in winter, 2009/10.