Street ball gets medieval
San Francisco-based fillmmaker Victor Solomon spent the past summer learning the much-overlooked art of making stained glass, and this past month, he combined his new passion for the art form with his enduring love of basketball to create—you guessed it—stained glass backboards. Says Solomon:
“It started off an offhanded joke, a play on the basketball terminology ‘glass,’ but the more I worked on it, the more I found a convergence of philosophy between the two [basketball and stained glass]. Both require exquisite precision in execution and devotion.”
Below, Solomon takes us through the process of making each backboard:
The pattern process is very lo-fi. First, I print out a full sized “blueprint” of the piece (52” x 32”) and isolate every piece as a pattern by which to cut the glass around.
Next, every piece of glass is hand-cut to the pattern. There is lots of blood (hands shredded) and lots of tears (broken pieces).
Once all the pieces are cut to pattern, they’re assembled, providing a preview of the final piece.
Francis the Cat gives his seal of approval as each piece is wrapped in copper foil in preparation for soldering.
The piece gets soldered, patinaed, and has its first moment in the sun.
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