I’ve made it to St. John the Baptist in Tisbury, Wiltshire. I’m here to close a loop that began almost two years ago with me standing behind a tripod in a darkened studio observing the silhouetted form of artist Tom Denny paint, scratch and thumb colour and texture onto a fragment of backlit glass.

He told me at the time that the work was all about ways of seeing. During the process of observing Tom I saw how he modulated the light through his work like a conductor orchestrates music.

The glass has now been installed, and I’m here to see it for the first time. There’s a morning service, which gives me the chance to stop, sit, and settle into the window as it gathers light.

And so it begins - a slow absorption into the work, suspended within the cadence of the service. I’m not a believer, but there’s comfort for me in the rhythm of the creed and the simple act of sitting amongst others.

Gradually, the hum of voices recedes and I start to observe the window. I notice how it imbues and informs the space around it - colour, shape, and light arrive in small, patient increments akin to little bursts of revelation.

The window not only exalts the glory of God, or the wonder of nature, but also the beauty we can find in the so called mundane. In the booklet about the Tisbury window, Denny talks about the details:

“In a central light we’re looking at cobbles. This is an image that stems from a project I did at Hereford Cathedral, about the poet and priest Thomas Traherne. One of the things Traherne said was “the dust and the stones in the street are as precious as gold”, which has remained in my mind as a token of valuing such things. As the artist, I have given as much attention to the dust in the stones in the streets as to the hands and the faces of the figures.”

And in observing the ordinary, Denny extends the concept further through one of his mentors:

“Thomas Hardy wished to be remembered as ‘one who noticed things’, that those were the only words he wanted to have as his epitaph. He…notices the value of…the handle of a chair that has absorbed generations of people holding it and rubbing it. And I suppose noticing in the sense of valuing is a lovely idea isn’t it?”

And what that means to me, as a person who has had his ups and downs, who suffers from a particularly curious and sometimes debilitating form of low self esteem, is transformative. For this glass, this work of art, is not just for the believer, the in-crowd, the participant - but it’s also for ordinary people like me.

A short video I took of Tom at work on the Tisbury window:

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