Helen Whittaker interpreting Hughie O’Donoghue’s art to stained glass for The Marian Windows, two windows installed in 2013 at the east end of Westminster Abbey’s Lady Chapel.

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By Melissa Barclay

My aim is to challenge the imagination and stimulate the mind to embark upon a spiritual journey,” says Helen Whittaker, Creative Director, Designer/Artist, and Conservation Painter at Barley Studio in York.

Fortunately, she takes us with her on her artistic and spiritual journey as she creates stained glass in its many forms: geometric, figurative and abstract designs, and restoration. In addition, one of Helen’s passions has been to extend artwork from two-dimensional stained glass into architectural sculpture combining glass with copper.

Helen’s journey begins at the University of Sunderland where she received her BA (Hons) in 1996 in Three-Dimensional Design, Glass with Ceramics. Helen was already interested in fine art, and particularly the work of the great masters of the past, such as Giotto, Caravaggio, and Vermeer, for their strong compositions and the drama of their imagery. She explains that “Caravaggio uses diagonal lines that take your eye upward, to carry the viewer into the painting. I like the play of light that you get with Caravaggio and Vermeer as well. I appreciate the medieval painters in their sense of proportion and design.”

At that time, she was interested in more modern artists such as Modigliani and Lichtenstein, a 1960s pop artist known for his thick dark outlines and bold colors. Lichtenstein also worked in 3-D sculpture and mixed media.

While at Sunderland, Helen particularly enjoyed life drawing and figurative art. She took the first steps along the path to stained glass by way of Barley Studio, coming from Sunderland as part of a work placement, arranged by her tutors Mike Davis and Cate Watkinson. At Barley Studio, Helen began to appreciate the traditional craft of stained glass. “The actual mechanics of the work can be complex,” she says. “I like the process of combining the craft and the art, how they can inform each other through skill and imagination.”

From the time of her undergraduate studies, Keith Barley was so impressed by Helen’s enthusiasm and craftsmanship, and how quickly she learned, that after her work placement, the Studio also supplied her with paid work during the holidays, and he kept a place open while she pursued a graduate programme.

The next phase of Helen’s journey led her to the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture (later renamed The Prince’s Foundation). There, she pursued an MA programme in Visual Islamic & Traditional Arts, specializing in stained glass, and graduating in 1998. Once she graduated, she joined Barley Studio’s permanent staff.

At the school, a strong emphasis was placed on practical and theoretical aspects of both Eastern and Western artistic traditions. The school’s ethos recognizes the traditional arts and crafts as an integral part of everyday life; that form, pattern, and color come together to create beauty. In partic-ular, Helen came to appreciate the importance of geometry as a reflection of universal order, and her MA professor Keith Critchlow became a major influence, providing guidance and direction as she pursued her artistic journey. A leading expert on sacred architecture and sacred geometry, he has authored many books and articles on the subject, and has designed geometrically-inspired buildings in England, the United States, and India.

A PILGRIMAGE IN STAINED GLASS:

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“Geometry provides the underlying structural process of my work and is also a valuable element for its symbolism,” says Helen. “Geometry is intrinsic to eastern and western traditions in art and architecture.” Looking back at the fine art she had admired previously, Helen could now see the underlying geometry that was so crucial to their fine compositional design.

Barley Studio, which specialized in Conservation and Restoration, provided her with a platform and a space to launch and put into practice her diverse range of talents in conservation work and restoration painting as well as design and creation of new stained glass work.

From the beginning, Helen had the opportunity to work on several major conservation projects, helping to restore some of the finest glass in England. At St. Mary’s, Fairford she did some of the restoration painting for the early 16C windows. She has restored windows at Durham Cathedral, Merton College Oxford, and many other places in association with Barley Studio. Most recently, she has been doing restoration painting for the 16C glass in Lichfield Cathedral’s Lady Chapel (2015). Through this work, she learned the importance of composition and context in stained glass design as well as the more technical side of glass painting.

“One can learn from the masters of the past and translate what we discover into the modern craft of today,” Helen says. “In restoration, I try to capture the spirit of the painting at the time, rather than just copy.”

Helen’s first major stained glass design projects were geometric in form, following from her interest in geometry developed during her MA studies. In 2000, at Ely Cathedral, she created The New Processional Way, set within the original cloister windows. Historically, Ely was a pilgrim center and the processional way replaced a medieval passageway used by pilgrims to pass between the shrine of St. Etheldreda and the Lady Chapel.

Helen produced a design sympathetic to the cathedral’s surrounding décor, especially relevant to symbols of the Virgin Mary. She had already been involved with Barley Studio’s conservation work at Ely so she was familiar with the existing stained glass scheme and the cathedral’s architectural space. Keith Barley encouraged her to look at examples of 14C stained glass to inform her modern geometric design. The three four-light windows and flanking door-panel lights, for a total of 14 windows, are based on geometric principles inspired by Critchlow.

In each commission, during the initial creative design and planning phase, Helen carefully considers the history of the building, the architectural space surrounding the window, the purpose of the window within the building (for example, the East Window of a church being the devotional point) and the light coming through the window (the aspect of the window and which direction it faces).

Helen created her first major figurative work in 2002 at St. Ethelburga’s, which had survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the World War II Blitz, but was almost destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1993. The vision for the new structure was to transform the surviving East end of the Church building into a Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, where scholars could explore the role of religion in conflict and work toward peaceful resolution.

Working with the Bishop of London, Helen incorporated surviving elements from the old church into her new stained glass design. The five-light East window depicting

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FACING PAGE:Artworks on the Theme of Pilgrimage, 2004, Beverly Minster, East Yorkshire, UK.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:Helen Whittaker on work placement at Barley Studios, 1995, York, UK.Sublime (detail), 2000, private commission.Helen receiving the Hancock Medal for High Achievement from the Prince of Wales, 2006.The New Processional Way (detail), 2000, Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, UK.

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the Benedictine Abbess St. Ethelburga contains fragments of rescued glass from a shattered 1872 window by C. E. Kempe. Each fragment is placed the right way up, as it would have been in its original setting, an idea from Keith Barley. Kem-pe glass pieces also appear in architectural features of the heavenly Jerusalem.

The Prince of Wales, who officially reopened the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in November 2002 and was involved in the project, said of Helen that she is “a brilliant craftswoman.”

“I was very keen to have something that represented the future and my window ties in with that,” Helen says. “The Prince funded me to do a Master’s at his Foundation. He was quite delighted by all the ties that we had, and that I was a working artist who had benefited from his backing.”

In 2002, Helen submitted a design to The Stevens Com-petition organized by the Worshipful Company of Glaziers, and received both a ‘Highly Commended’ and the Award for Craftsmanship, out of 56 stained glass artists. She also won the commission to design a new East window for Ellerton Priory where Barley Studio has been responsible for conser-vation and restoration work on the Priory’s medieval glass.

That same year, Helen received a commission to create the Great West window at Worksop Priory, Church of Our Lady and St. Cuthbert. As part of the award, Helen received a Prince’s Foundation Travelling Scholarship to visit Germany, to see how windows were made on a large scale in several major studios. She accompanied a party from North Wales School of Art and Design on a tour of stained glass installations at the cathedral and churches in Cologne, the Glass Museum at Linnich, and other locations in Germany, including Mainz Cathedral, site of the Chagall windows. She was able to spend one week each of work experience at Derix Glasstudios, Peters Studio, and Oidtmann Studio.

The window celebrates the 800th anniversary of the Pri-ory’s founding, with Helen’s traditional figure of St. Cuthbert for the Great West window, incorporating decorative motifs of the Priory’s south door ironwork, along with fruit, leaves, and flowers from the Tickhill Psalter, a former Priory treasure.

Helen is best known for her installation at Beverley Min-ster (2004), her first major abstract work and her first work in-corporating sculpture with stained glass. Pilgrimage conveys the Minster’s history as a pilgrim destination from medieval times. Here, Helen created artworks representing pilgrim-age, and was chosen from five invited, established artisans of different disciplines to submit designs for the Minster.

“In my mind’s eye, I could see my designs in situ,” she recalls. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do, in and around the whole space based on the theme devoted to twenty-first century pilgrimage.”

The Pilgrim window is comprised of glass chosen to complement the color tones already assembled in the nearby medieval Great East window. Helen intentionally created the new window in an abstract design rather than figurative, so as not to compete with it, and to bring balance to the whole. “I concentrated on the transmission of light,” Helen says. “I wanted to use the specific qualities of glass, by combining color, texture, paint, and expressive leadwork, to create a sparkling, jewelled effect similar to that achieved by medieval glaziers.”

Although abstract, the design has a strong geometric basis, inspired by Helen’s studies with Critchlow. “His knowledge of geometry gave meaning to what I was doing. The center of the window represents God the Creator, the starting point of all our journeys. Geometry is at the heart of the design – at a practical level, unifying the work as a whole and as a symbolic medium for the message of faith and love upon

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LEFT TO RIGHT:A 1993 view of St. Ethelburga’s bomb-damaged east window. Stained glass incorporating fragments from the bomb-damaged window, St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, London, 2002.Before and after views of Helen’s 2007 restoration painting of St. Jerome, early 16th-century stained and painted glass, St. Mary’s Church, Fairford, UK.Helen painting the “Spring” window from The Four Seasons, St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s Church, Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK.

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which all pilgrimages are based. As with all geometric forms, it is impossible to tell the beginning from the end.”

Two life-sized sculpture figures fashioned of three triangles of sheet copper stand beneath the Pilgrim window, made by Helen Whittaker and Keith Barley with advice from sculptor and teacher Harold Gosney. Harold has often assisted Helen in developing her ideas into practical forms, and he initially suggested using sheet copper for the figures at Beverley. The figures appear to gaze at the window while shafts of ‘pilgrim light’ fall upon them, and they receive the light. Their triangu-lar-shaped copper ‘hearts’ provide a link to the window, as each is composed of small fragments of colored glass. The copper figures add an extra dimension to the window, physically and psychologically. Helen’s intention is to encourage the viewer to think. Completing the scheme, a four-foot candle stand of copper in the shape of a cross, represents the Trinity.

In 2006, Helen and Keith Barley jointly received the Craftsmanship Award from the York Guild of Building. Other stained glass commissions followed, and other awards, including the Hancock Medal for High Achievement from The Prince’s Foundation.

Helen created The Four Seasons using allegorical figures spread across four windows at St. Peter & Mary, Stowmarket (Suffolk) in 2005-06. God is represented as the Creator of the elements Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. Each season fills a neo-Gothic triple lancet topped by tracery lights, on a background of clear and tinted diamond quarries with textured edging and wavy lead lines.

“I had already worked on some designs against a background of clear white diamond quarry glass in a few other windows, es-pecially at St. Ethelburga,” Helen says. “This gave me the oppor-tunity to expand the idea further.” Helen views the Stowmarket windows as a figurative development of the Beverley design.

In 2006, at St. Gregory, Kirknewton (Northumbria), Helen designed a centenary window and copper sculpture in memory of social reformer Josephine Butler, buried in the churchyard. The following year, Helen continued with the theme of Pilgrimage at Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell in a 22-foot East window, Jesus and the Children. That same year, Helen designed a Prayer Tree copper sculpture filled with colored glass for the York District Hospital Multi-Faith Chapel. Leaf shapes were inspired by the natural shape of the Tree of Heaven or Ailanthus altissima leaf, and the sculpture includes prayer hooks within the veins of the leaves, which allow chapel visitors to leave prayers for their family and friends.

“All kinds of people use the chapel,” Helen says. “That’s when you realize how important your work can be, when you see people leaving notes on the tree.”

In 2008, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Club in Piccadilly, London celebrated its 90th anniversary, and Helen won the commission to create a window for the Club’s staircase. A landscape of historic RAF scenes is topped by a large circle representing the radar sweep and the moon providing guid-ance to the aircraft. Helen used the RAF motto as a starting point for her design: Per ardua et astra (through struggle to the stars), although the moon provides guidance to the aircraft in this scene.

One of the challenges of this project was that the building does not have much natural lighting. Helen compensated for this at the bottom of the window by use of metallic gold, bronze, and silver leaf with colored enamels that rely on reflection from interior lighting. In the upper level, Helen used transparent and lighter colored glass to take advantage of external light.

Also in 2008, Helen reprised the theme of pilgrimage at St. Mary’s Church, Community and Conference Centre,

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Sheffield. The previous window had been stored during World War II and then lost. Following the creation of the community centre and conference venue in 2001, it was decided to replace the lost glass. The journey begins in the lower portion of the window with an abstract, geometric pathway that sweeps diagonally across the entire lower half of the window. As the pilgrims traverse the desert, a spring appears, and droplets of rainfall.

Two life-size copper sculptures emphasize the window and the theme of pilgrimage, the journey through life, and life choices. Constructed of triangular-shaped pieces of copper, the figures transform into more complex, whole beings as they move upward in the sculpture, and progress along the pilgrim’s way. The triangle shapes symbolize the three-fold nature of God, and the connection to the window with its triangular shapes creates a three-way relationship between the window, the sculpture, and the viewer. The sculptures are a conscious development of those created at Beverley. “The Beverley sculptures were simple in form, almost a breakdown of oneself before God,” Helen explains. “The Sheffield figures turn back into the human form with God’s love and guidance.”

At St. Saviour’s Church, Sheffield, in 2010, Helen had the opportunity to create a stained glass and copper memorial for teacher Sheila Ferguson.

In 2013, at Holy Trinity, Stockton-on-the-Forest (Yorks.), Helen designed a memorial window for the North chancel, based on the theme of the Holy Trinity. A geometric design utilizes a trio of traditional Christian symbols to form triangular shapes around the “Tree of History,” a Trinitarian idea from 12C theologian Joachim Fiore. Helen’s inspiration stemmed from a quote by Hermes Trismegistus, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.”

Another milestone in Helen’s journey took place in 2013, at Westminster Abbey. Barley Studio and Helen Whittaker were commissioned to work with painter Hughie O’Donoghue to create two stained glass windows to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. O’Donoghue created the artwork, Helen interpreted the painting onto glass using full-size cartoons provided by Hughie, and Barley Studio made and installed the windows.

“It’s been a great privilege to work in this shrine to English history and culture, with royal emblems everywhere you look,” said Keith Barley.

The windows are located in the Lady Chapel, with The Chapel’s original 16C stained glass by the King’s Glazier, Flemish Barnard Flower. Much of the glass was destroyed in the English Civil War, and the rest during World War II, but a few original fragments of old cobalt and ruby glass are preserved in the uppermost traceries, and these were kept as part of the new design.

The two windows replaced plain glazing which had been in place since World War II, and are located on either side of an East window by Alan Younger (2000). O’Donoghue’s design incorporates Marian symbols of lilies for purity and the Annunciation, stars for the Virgin Mary’s conception, and fleur-de-lys, which are also associated with royalty. Each window comprises about 50 panels, with white or cream-colored lilies and stars painted on the background.

“I was delighted to be chosen to create this artwork in collaboration with Hughie O’Donoghue,” Helen said. “When the commission started at Westminster Abbey, I knew Hughie was a painter and that he painted in oils. I was so excited by the idea of trying to interpret his paintings onto glass. Most people think a stained glass artist must actually design the work but I think if a good designer has the right collaborators, as John Piper did with Patrick Reyntiens, they can make it work.”

FACING PAGE:The Trinity Window , north chancel, Holy Trinity Church, Stockton on the Forest, York, UK.

THIS PAGE, TOP:The Trinity Window (detail)BOTTOM:Artworks on the Theme of Pilgrimage, 2004, copper sculpture with glass, Beverley Minster, East Yorkshire, UK.

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“The fact that Hughie is a good artist and painter, and Helen is a good stained glass artist means that we can work together,” added Keith.

Helen wanted to capture the consistency of O’Donoghue’s painting as well as replicating the style of the brushstrokes, so she figured out what kind of brushes he used as well as getting the right consistency of paints and pigments. One difference from traditional stained glass design was that O’Donoghue used blue enamels, rather than the traditional dark brown paint. Helen replicated this using blue enamel and blue paint, mixed with Dammar varnish and distilled turpentine. Multiple layers of enamels were used to intensify the colors just as O’Donoghue does when painting on paper or canvas.

Another difference from traditional stained glass work came in the development of the lead. O’Donoghue did not use lead lines to outline the forms, as is usual in stained glass, but Helen showed how carefully placed partial outlines can emphasize the design. In this way, the two artists worked together to create the final work.

“After all the hours of hard work making the windows, the Barley Studio team are very excited about this project,” Keith stated. “As a Yorkshire firm, we are proud to be keeping the art and craft of stained glass, both creation and conservation, alive, especially as we are celebrating forty years in business this year.”

Helen has designed new windows at many churches and public buildings in Great Britain. She recently finished Paradise, reflecting St Brandon’s journey to an exotic island, at St. Brandon’s Church, Brancepeth (Co. Durham), and a Jesse tree at St. Mary’s Priory Church, Abergavenny (Wales).

“I receive inspiration for stained glass all around me,” Helen says. “I draw from everything that inspires, from all art, not just stained glass.”

Helen aims to pass on this inspiration to artists and fellow pilgrims through teaching, exhibits, and other outreach activities. In addition to her role as Course Tutor at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts since 1999, she gives many lectures and workshops around the country. She also demonstrated the medieval glass techniques used in John Thornton’s York Minster East window for a BBC4 broadcast (2011).

“Each project presents new challenges, and each space suggests a partic-ular style,” Helen says. “I like being able to work in geometric, figurative or abstract forms, using different styles of design without feeling restrained or boxed in. Ultimately, windows should be in harmony with their surroundings but speak of today.”

Helen presents a spiritual message in all of her windows, with a strong personal connection to each place and the people who use each building. She is an enthusiastic, inspirational, and highly gifted stained glass artist. She is also generous in acknowledging the inspiration and support from her mentors and collaborators: conservator and glazier Keith Barley, Keith Critchlow, Harold Gosney, Charles Smith, and many others. Working with the talented team of conservators and glaziers at Barley Studio has allowed Helen to create larger and more complex projects.

We look forward to following Helen Whittaker’s artistic pilgrimage in the years to come. “You must have a passion for stained glass and love what you do,” Helen says. “You can’t just follow this trend or that trend, leaded or free-painted, modern or traditional glass. You have to follow your own vision, and your own path.” •