When Glass Was on Fire

I spent two weeks last winter in a warehouse outside of Chicago, standing in front of six hundred backglass panels stacked like stained glass in a cathedral nobody built. The collection belonged to a retired Comet technician named Gene, who had pulled every one from machines headed for the scrapyard between 1972 and 1981. Under the fluorescent lights they looked dead, clouded with nicotine and neglect. But Gene had rigged a single 60-watt bulb behind each frame, and when he flicked them on one by one, the room turned into a burning gallery that no museum had ever thought to curate.

Six Screens of Fire

Each backglass was reverse-silkscreened, a process where artists painted in mirror image on the back of tempered glass, laying down six to twelve separate colour passes through silk screens. Every pass had to cure before the next went down. Registration between layers had to be exact or the face of a cowboy would shift like a cheap 3D movie. The artists came from package design, movie posters, and hot rod culture. They brought pulp sensibilities to a medium lit from behind by incandescent bulbs, and the result was something no printed page or backlit screen has matched since.