Marina Gélineau: Vitrailliste

When she’s not working on the restoration of historic stained glass windows, Marina Gélineau creates striking contemporary glass designs of her own, sometimes drawing inspiration from the landscapes of her native Poitou or from the animal world. Twice a prizewinner in the SEMA Youth category for contemporary design (2005), Gélineau shows a talent and assurance that belie her youth. After studying art history at the University of Poitiers, she continued her training with courses and apprenticeships in stained glass technique and painting on glass before setting up her own atelier in Poitiers in 2007. She now works her stained glass sorcery using a variety of techniques: the traditional lead-strip method used in large stained glass windows; the Tiffany method, which replaces the lead with lighter copper foil and allows the artist to create three-dimensional designs; glass fusion, in which several layers of glass are melted together in a kiln; and painting on glass — her Renaissance-inspired Horsemen of the Apocalypse and her grisaille version of a famous rabbit by Albrecht Dürer show her painterly skill. Gélineau also excels at combining traditional techniques with contemporary designs, as in her prizewinning Mobilis in Mobile, an eye-shaped window onto a marine landscape with swaying seaweed, inspired by Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and its sequel, The Mysterious Island.

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Originally published in the December 2009 issue of France Today.