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Featured Window

Window of the Month
Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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Featured Windows, February 2004

First Baptist Church Window

Building: First Baptist Church of Birmingham

City: Birmingham

State: Michigan

This window, located near the courtyard of First Baptist Church, depicts the movement from spiritual brokenness to wholeness. Its theme is based on a biblical text from the Book of Isaiah: "....Your light shall rise from the darkness around you, and your gloom will turn to the brightness of noon....You will arise like a spring whose waters never fail." (Isaiah 58:10,11)

Organized in 1870, First Baptist Church met for many years in a modest frame building, which was replaced by an English Gothic stone structure completed in 1929. An educational wing, with a courtyard and fountain, was added in 1959. The courtyard window, dedicated in 1995 as a memorial to member Mickey Maguire, was created by Lucinda Shaw, a former member of the congregation and founder in 1987 of Acacia Art Glass Studios in Baltimore, Maryland. After completing a Fine Arts degree at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, she interned with the Cox-Bernard Stained Glass Studio in England and continued her studies through various workshops, such as those at Pilchuck International Glass School, Patrick Reyntien Studio, and with Albinas Elskus. In addition to conducting private classes and workshops, she has taught stained glass design and fabrication at several Maryland colleges and lectured on stained glass history at Oxford University. Her work is represented in many public and private collections.

First Baptist Church was registered in the Michigan Stained Glass Census by D. Llewellyn Drong of Davison (MSGC 96.0049).

(MSGC 1996.0049)

Text by Betty MacDowell, Michigan Stained Glass Census, February , 2004.