REMODEL: The Great Stained Glass Affair Pane 2

The Wright pane was the second pane that John produced. The amount of work he put into this piece is outstanding. So many pieces of glass. I certainly handed him a challenge. Initially only two artists popped in my head that evening standing outside of Napa Rose at Disneyland. Frank Lloyd Wright was an obvious choice but the second piece had to be an artist I have adored since I was a child. At a young age I loved seeing the tile murals in Tomorrowland while you rode the people movers. Primarily because A Small World was one of my favorite rides growing up, still a staple of my visits with the kids. At a young age, I learned of the amazing worlds Mary Blair created through her career, and how she shaped not only Disneyland but many of the movies and tv specials that Disney produced.

Mary Blair had to have a pane in our home. Blair’s ability to create unique perspective through art and cartoon animation, was the reason  our family enjoyed the Small World immensely. Paley was about four when she first visited the magical world of Mary Blair.  While the twins were three. My mother was also a great fan of Mary’s work because she grew up with so many of her Golden Books like “I Can Fly”. Even when we were children we had Mary Blair golden books. As I looked through world of Mary Blair books and biographies, I kept seeing one piece of artwork over and over. A piece that would inspire me in the selection process of the remaining two panes for the sun tunnel.

Combing through Mary’s work, I kept clicking on pieces that lead me back to her work on the Small World ride she did for the Worlds Fair in 1964 for Walt. Disney took Mary’s landscapes and character drawings and turned it into a world of children. While Walt’s team showcased animatronics at the 1964 Worlds Fair, Mary brought the inner child out of all ages who rode a new Disney ride over and over. One of those city scapes kept popping up again and again, and it was one of my favorite pieces. Now, it’s not one Mary’s pieces of art but it was a foundation to something that touched our hearts.

The city scape would later become the facade for the Disneyland ride in Aneheim in the 60’s. One of the design requests I had for this project to was make sure that the window panes would block the sigh of the mylar wrap in the sun tunnel box. I requested all of the glass used to be either opaque or textured to block the clear view to the sun tunnel area. The Blair pane not only added more colors but also provided a white contrast to balance out the four panes. This pane would be the third pane that was produced for the project. It began construction in December of 2024. We were in no furry with these pieces.

All of the pieces of art I decided to do a digital sketch, giving John and his team at ArtWrks a jumping off point. I took each image of the art and used Adobe Illustrator to convert into a black and white vector file. This process was time consuming, but made me see how we were going to need to crop into a certain portion of each image. There was no way we were going to fit these artworks into 24”x24” panes. Below are some of the other Mary Blair artworks that I was considering for the pane.

This pane is truly another unique piece, based mainly on the creative detail that John added to the pan. I was floored when he explained the two challenges of this pane. First was the castle crenellation. Yes, I just learned what that stepped wall on the top of a castle tower. The crenellation was a two fold problem with the cutouts on the red castle tower glass and the white sky. The second challenge was the white window in the red tower. The process involved sand blasting the glass. He placed a plastic piece with a circle cutout over the glass and blasted the sucker. The result is clean opening in the glass. Truly the process is amazing to watch come to life. Working with John and his wife Theresa has been truly a wonderful experience They truly are a team and legends. I cannot wait to see the rest of this amazing work of art come to life.