Stained glass windows are nice to look at. They’re a medium usually associated with churches and religious institutions dominated by joyless biblical imagery. Their mosaic-like style of colored glass shards are assembled together to create an image that despite their vibrancy inspires a melancholic air of religious duty rather than how art manages to engage the senses in more positive ways. If you were to approach a documentary chronicling the making of a stained-glass window for a church, much less one that just about hits the two-hour mark, vivid enthusiasm might not be the first thing you feel before watching. Holy Frit shatters these preconceived notions of detached & tedious documentaries on the process of art, instead zooming in on the changing qualities of humanity during the finer points of creating something so meticulous.
Justin S. Monroe directs this story of Tim Carey, an L.A. visual artist, mostly known for his painting who, in a relatively wild turn of events ends up winning a bid to create the largest stained glass window in the world for a church. His mock-up design is beautiful, sweeping, and all at once glorious, mixing his painting approach with that of the puzzle-piece style of traditional stained glass. But he’s run into a major problem after showing the church’s staff his concept: he doesn’t know how to make it, and the studio he’s partnered to work with is far too small to pull off the job.
The conundrum Carey paints himself into is one that thankfully has a solution, but it depends solely on a glass artist who invented the technique of fusing glass in the early ’90s. He just happens to be one of the most renowned glass artists in the world, with commissions in Taiwan, Rome, and Mexico, as well as San Francisco and Maryland in the USA. Carey must go on a journey to enlist the help of the illustrious Narcissus Quagliata, the only person in the world who can help him create the 3400-square-foot window design. In other words, Carey is faced with a daunting task with little chance for success.
Monroe’s direction manages to find the separators between Carey’s theoretical plan of action and Quagliata’s harshly practical response. A series of escalating problems requiring hasty solutions creates an experience that keeps getting interesting, adjusting the film’s pacing into something that feels like a thriller. With Quagliata’s curmudgeonly demeanor and Carey’s sudden bursts of straight-faced humor, their unique & unapologetic personalities propel Monroe’s story into an arc that fiction couldn’t have told better. To add to the suspense, the act of fusing glass (adding frit, a mixture of silicone and glass particles, to existing glass pieces) is largely indeterminate so it’s impossible to know how the finished product will look once it’s out of the kiln. A lot is riding on the promise of what the window should look like.
Carey and Quagliata aren’t the only people working on this window, far from it; the entire glass studio is put to work in order to meet an unbelievably short deadline for a massive amount of production and materials. Carey is given a timeline of 18 months to complete the window. The project begins at The Judson Studio in Los Angeles, but Carey realizes quickly that it doesn’t have the resources he needs to deliver his piece on time.
So Carey takes up shop at Bullseye Glass Co., where Quagliata worked previously in residency. There we stay for the majority of the journey, spanning years. And as we see Carey and Quagliata’s relationship develop we also meet Quentin Blackman, 19 at the start of the project, who would never have dreamed where his responsibilities would lie just two years ahead. What Holy Frit does more than just fulfill its role as an art documentary is catalog a personal history of everyone involved in what becomes known as the “Resurrection Window.”
What Carey creates is simply stunning, almost like a brush technique but through the medium of fused glass. Luc G. Nicknair beautifully captures both the process of preparing the art and the final results, while keeping shots of everything else relatively standard. Piece by piece, the mural of Carey, Quagliata, and Blackman’s work come together at the church in Kansas City in ultimate satisfaction.
You may never have thought it, but two hours whiz by as every chapter in this tumultuous creation enthralls even more than the last. In the end, Holy Frit becomes more than a film about a piece of art but rather the diversities of individuals creating something that contains a multitude of humanity while representing something larger.
Holy Frit is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Abramorama.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDaUN_wEWt4]
In the end, Holy Frit becomes more than a film about a piece of art but rather the diversities of individuals creating something that contains a multitude of humanity while representing something larger.
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GVN Rating
Anya is an avid film watcher, blogger and podcaster. You can read her words on film at letterboxd and medium, and hear their voice on movies, monsters, and other weird things on Humanoids From the Deep Dive every other Monday. In their “off” time they volunteer as a film projectionist, reads fiction & nonfiction, comics, and plays video games until it’s way too late.
