Some of his earlier creations might be able to pass as the work of curious, tinkering hands like the tiny, hanging lightcatchers he once built. But there s much more than the work of a man s hands invested in the Buffalo Soldier that stands in stained glass along the front of his home, or his lucid, etched-glass portrait of Cleopatra. The piece he s putting together for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Port Arthur might be his most intricate and symbolic yet. It combines stained, etched and fused glass. It incorporates much of the symbolism at the center of the Catholic faith, including a second panel behind the window s face that will make a silhouette of the Virgin Mary appear on sunny days.
Art has a lot of power.
And when you can mystify people like that, you think that maybe it gives them hope that humanity isn t going to hell in a handbasket. He s mystified more than a few people in Southeast Texas. More than 10,000 square feet of Briscoe s stained-glass art stands in the 20 or so churches he s worked for. He was inspired by the unusual habits of Picasso, who would buy small, run-down villas and move into them just long enough to fill them with art, board them back up and move away. His plans are a bit less extravagant to fill boxes and crates with stained glass that can continue to trickle out after he s gone.