Stained glass fixture comes down at CCC

CLOVIS — Despite a brief scare when one of the stained glass panels split in half, a piece of art that has hung in the Clovis Community College commons area since the 1980s was removed on Saturday with relatively few hiccups.

The eight stained glass panels making up the piece called "The Pair" were removed from their longtime home hanging from the second floor ceiling outside the school's bookstore due to safety concerns.

Carpenter Larry Jones, one of several CCC employees who helped take down the artwork, said the process actually went smoother than he expected, besides that one panel.

"The one piece that broke in half of the glass, that was fun," Jones said sarcastically. "I guess it (was a result of the glass) just being old but luckily me and Dick (Wimberly) were able to keep it from falling down to the ground and shattering everywhere."

"It was a little bit heart-throbbing but we managed not to drop anything," Wimberly said of the piece that broke in two.

Wimberly helped former CCC art teacher Bruce DeFoor, who created the piece, install the artwork back in 1982. On Saturday Wimberly was tasked with overseeing the removal process.

"It was a lot easier (to take it down)," Wimberly said. "I just have the memory that when we put this up it seemed very (difficult), I think partly it was because it was the biggest project that I had ever installed before and I was a little bit nervous about it. It was much more mentally stressful when it's the first thing you've ever done years ago that was this size."

Wimberly said the only other complication came early on in the process when one of the four wooden braces holding the piece in place did not want to come loose.

"That was a little bit bothersome," Wimberly said. "We were glad we didn't break any glass when we had to break that holding piece."

Wimberly said the broken stained glass panel was put in a box "like putting two puzzle pieces close together" and DeFoor will be coming back to Clovis from Montana in a few weeks to reassemble the panel, which Wimberly predicted would not be too difficult.

He said three of the eight stained glass panels were created by layering glass pieces over each other rather than butting up glass pieces against each other, and those panels would also require some work.

Jones said the stained glass pieces, which had been estimated to weigh over a hundred pounds each, were actually quite light, through the frame that held them in place was heavier, making it the most difficult part of the process.

As for the future of "The Pair," Wimberly said it may be hung in the library, which he estimated would put less stress on the workers if it is hung closer to the ground.

The process went quicker than expected, as workers started at 8 a.m. and had everything down on the ground and in storage boxes shortly after 10 a.m., a bit quicker than the 16 hours Wimberly estimated beforehand when he was trying to think about everything that might possibly go wrong.