Sidebar: Chapel window features creation

A window in the Interfaith Prayer Room at Albany International Airport provides visitors with a glimpse of land and sky, but they won't be looking outside to see God's beauty.

Instead, creation has been captured in glass by Cohoes Design Glass Associates Inc., which designed the window and recently put the finishing touches on it.

The window, made of sandblasted, clear plate glass, measures 8 by 16 feet and is comprised of four panels, according to Susan van Heukelom, the designer and co-owner of Cohoes Design.

Rev. Richard Vosko, a priest of the Albany Diocese and internationally known church designer, contacted the Cohoes company several months ago and shared some conceptual ideas for the window. After meeting with him, the architect and other Interfaith Prayer Room Planning Board members, the company came away with a good idea of Father Vosko's vision for the window.

"His idea was to get the whole of the cosmos. It's a landscape with cloud formations," said Nigel Johnson, president of Cohoes Design.

In keeping with the overall interfaith atmosphere of the room, the design of the window does not favor any religious denomination but presents an image of the God of the Universe.

"Obviously, we wanted to try to make it accessible to anybody, all religions. There wasn't to be any iconography or anything to attach it to any particular religion," Ms. van Heukelom said.

The choice of a landscape is appropriate for depicting the Creator while the sky reminds people of their flight on more than one level, she added. (PQ)

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