Personal Narrative: The Roots Of Knowledge

I walk in, surrounded by millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours worth of glass. Roughly sixty-thousand pieces, each hand crafted by a crew of students and professionals working together, tell a story. Sixty panels of vibrant colors, sloshes of visual food that appeal to our creative stomachs, lurching the eyes of any passing viewer, including myself, forward into a land of distant time and space and beauty. The Roots of Knowledge, located inside the Utah Valley University library has only been open for a short time, yet somehow has been able to captivate viewers from local, regional, and even international congregations. The artist, as already stated, is trying to tell a story. “A journey through the ages,” they call it, “A window into the history of human intelligence.” The beautiful stained glass windows are “a panorama of history and human drama,” and help …show more content…
The mantic side of my brain was able to recognize this, and subconsciously find an allegorical-like relationship between me and the glass in which a hidden meaning was found on a personal level. This feeling I had was one of divinity and eternal weight. I looked at all of the figures around the entire window (while still focusing primarily on my two main panels), many of them philosophers and others with an anthropocentric point of view who did not or were not able to see things with a long-term perspective. I won’t go too far into detail regarding this revelatory experience, but I realized something that day that shook me. And so, to answer the question “was it worth doing,” the answer is a resounding “yes.” The pieces of glass and the handiness and the care that are clearly evident within each angle and each color are alone worth the 12 years of work and effort. The formidable story behind the eyes of each character and the hues and shades in each stroke of paint are