lee lawrie | Washington Glass Studio

National Guard Soldiers stand guard at the John Adams Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. National Guard Soldiers and Airmen have traveled to the National Capital Region to provide support leading up to the 59th Presidential Inauguration. (photo: Tech. Sgt. Lucretia Cunningham)

15,000 National Guard troops are now in DC for the scheduled Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. But with so many troops in a city that has become a maze of black fencing, cement barriers and dozens of checkpoints, there is an eerie calm in Washington DC, ahead of a feared storm of supporters of President Donald Trump, who don’t believe their candidate lost and are willing to continue the violence.

Photos of the Guard protecting the Library of Congress Adams Building shows the soldiers in front of the cast glass panels made by Washington Glass Studio with Portland’s Fireart Studio. Click Here to jump to the 2012 American Craft interview and photos of the cast glass made and the process to make the architectural artwork.

We are happy that the military is taking no chances with who was coming to protect the inauguration.

On a normal day, it takes about an hour to walk the 2.5 miles down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill.

But these are no normal days.

These precautions come a week after a mob of supporters of Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the results of the presidential election.

With the Memorial Day Weekend here, a blog posting that touches on themes of American Art & history is in order.

Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Adams Building

The Process looks at how the Washington Glass Studio artists are recreating the original, historic bronze doors from the Library of Congress (LOC) Adams Building in kiln-cast glass.
As mentioned in an earlier post, the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) oversees this landmark building, and they sought out ways to provide up-to-date functional aspects for their structures, all while balancing the requirement for maintaining the artistic legacy of its buildings – a daunting task in an ever changing world. Their design for the LOC Adams building was to have the historic bronze entry doors (that could not be brought up to code) set in the “open” position, and install new code-compliant functional glass doors for the public access – with the glass doors designed to reference the original door sculptures. (Click HERE to jump to link post of sculpted bronze door features.) Washington Glass Studio is creating the new cast glass panels, and this edition of The Process looks at how the molds are being taken from the original doors in-situ.

Sean Hennessey, the master caster, sets up his mold making equipment and preps the doors.

The LOC was very concerned that the mold taking process could adversely impact the patina of the bronze doors, so before any work on the doors was completed, testing of the materials and release agents were conducted on an inconspicuous section of the backside of the doors.