FROM VERMONT ART GUIDE #4
Chris Jeffrey Lights It Up
Over the years, Chris Jeffrey has built a reputation as a talented and versatile stained glass artist in central Vermont. His windows run the gamut, borrowing from historical styles of Frank Lloyd Wright, Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Louis Tiffany, and Victorian-era glasswork, but also from the contemporary aesthetics of Piet Mondrian and M. C. Escher. His stained glass has found its way into private homes around the country, a tea house in Stowe, and even a mausoleum. Notable public installations include First Presbyterian Church in Barre and Studio Place Arts. Works of colored glass fused with patterned dichroic glass can be found at Frog Hollow in Burlington.
Jeffrey’s newer work still plays with light, but in a completely different way. Since 2012, the artist has been making light installations around Montpelier. In February and March 2017, he placed a light installation in a vacant storefront in the historic Winooski Block. This summer, he will be creating a light installation at Studio Place Arts as part of a larger exhibition of his strip paintings, three-dimensional kinetic Plexiglas pieces, and other investigations of light and color.
This article appeared in Vermont Art Guide #4. Each issue of Vermont Art Guide has over a hundred places to see art around the state. The full-color, printed magazine has artist and venue profiles as well as articles and news about Vermont Art. Our goal is to document and share the state’s incredible art scene.
ORDER YOUR COPY OF VERMONT ART GUIDE TODAY!
“When there isn’t the distraction of imagery or even a physical framework, those pure colors inspire in me a sense of mystery, introspection and penetrating beauty,” writes Jeffrey. “It’s the feeling I get when I take the time to stop working for a while and watch as cobalt blue and crimson red, pure colors projected by the sun through a stained glass panel hanging in a window of my studio, slowly make their way over the floor and up the wall. The image in the panel, its dimensions, the motivation for its creation, fade to irrelevance. All that matters are the nebulous colors before me, not telling me what to think or feel, just allowing me to become absorbed in their intensity and beauty.”
This article appeared in Vermont Art Guide #4. Each issue of Vermont Art Guide has over a hundred places to see art around the state. The full-color, printed magazine has artist and venue profiles as well as articles and news about Vermont Art. Our goal is to document and share the state’s incredible art scene.
ORDER YOUR COPY OF VERMONT ART GUIDE TODAY!
Jeffrey is a member of The Front in Montpelier and participates in their changing exhibitions. You can see more of his light installations online at www.lightstudioj.com.