By Kristin Laney
Tom Holdman's little studio lies hidden on a gravel road in a Highland neighborhood behind a white house with purple trim. It looks like an ordinary storage unit on the outside. But inside, the walls are covered with door-sized pencil sketches of sacred scenes of divine figures and heavenly places.
The sketches are later transformed into completed stained glass windows that lean against walls or hang on frames. Sunlight cascades through the carefully selected blue, green, red and diversely colored pieces of glass. Holdman and his artists gather together at the frame whenever a piece is completed to admire their work. Sometimes they linger for five or 10 minutes.
'But it's usually around 15 or more,' said Holdman, the master artist and owner of Holdman Studios. He is currently designing and producing the stained glass windows for the San Antonio Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
With the kind of responsibilities that accompany this job, you might expect Holdman to have a few wrinkles in his forehead, silver hair and a twinkle in his eye. Instead the artist has a full crop of brown hair, a youthful face and a ready smile.
Susi Hoffmann, assistant production manager for Holdman Studios, said Holdman is a joking, comical and typical 33-year-old man when he's away from work.
' when he's at work, he's at work,' Hoffmann said.
And he has the resume to prove it. Since first doing windows for the Palmyra Temple, Holdman has created windows for the Winter Quarters, Manhattan and Sao Paulo temples as well as the Palmyra Visitor's Center.
Now, Holdman's team will assemble nearly 30,000 pieces of stained glass for the San Antonio Temple. Each must be carefully hand-selected and then scored by holding a sharp blade straight up and down and applying pressure until the glass makes a screeching chalkboard sound.
Holdman said there's no possible way one man could do it all.
Luckily, he has some help. On a typical day in the shop, he and his employees gather for a spiritual thought before beginning the day. The crew then congregates in the shop around lay-out tables while cutting and positioning glass and handling machinery. A wandering black lab weaves through their maze of legs as they work, and a stereo plays classical and oldies music in the background, interjected occasionally by the noise of electric tools.
'I am the orchestra conductor, and I oversee,' Holdman said of the studio.
Holdman is where the process all begins. He attends the temple and spends a lot of time intensely studying the scriptures seeking inspiration for his ideas. He then uses a little side office in his shop to do his initial sketching.
Hoffmann said although it sometimes looks like Holdman is pulling his ideas straight out of thin air, he definitely has to work at it.
'He'll spend three days straight with almost no sleep some days doing it,' Hoffmann said.
And sometimes he has to work to make those ideas transform into a reality.
Dell Pulley, managing director of Holdman Studios, explained how Holdman's first and second windows proposals for the Palmyra Temple were at first rejected by the church.
' did some preliminary drawings, and said they were nice, but said, 'We didn't necessarily even budget to do this and use stained glass in here,'' Pulley said.
But Holdman persisted. Pulley said Holdman somehow got a note into The First Presidency saying he would find a way to fund the windows. After Holdman had collected all of the private donations for the windows, the church accepted his offer.
'After it was done it ended up being President Hinckley's most favorite glass in all of the temples,' Pulley said. 'And it just kind of ballooned from there.'
Holdman's bulletin board in his office is now covered with sketches of the designs for the San Antonio Temple. The rights to the project came only after Holdman took part in a bidding process. Holdman said the church approached approximately eight stained glass studios from all over the world for this temple alone. The church then hand-picked from among the applicants, he said.
'And then I guess I won,' Holdman said with a smile and a quiet laugh.
Holdman, who said he is very humbled to be doing what he's doing, doesn't believe he got into his work by chance. While about to return home from his mission to Dallas, Texas, Holdman received a phone call from his mission president asking his to extend his mission. Anxious to get home, Holdman decided to pray about the decision. He said he believes the Lord told him he would bless him is he stayed.
'I asked, 'How will you bless me? I want it all spelled out,'' Holdman said. 'And He said to me, with this piercing in my heart, I should do stained glass as my occupation.'
After returning home from his mission, Holdman applied to and was rejected by Brigham Young University. The rejection, which Holdman called the biggest blessing of his life, allowed him to start working on glass art. He worked out of his father's garage and went door to door to residences in Orem to sell his art.
Holdman said he believes he had good reason for his persistence.
'If the Lord asks you to do something, he will open the doors for you,' Holdman said.
Holdman's positive thinking is a trait he has had through out his life. His wife Gayle recalled once when Holdman took her for a walk around the temple, placed a leaf in her hand and then asked her to close her eyes and say in her mind it was a rose. When she put the leaf up to her nose, she was shocked because it smelled like a rose.
'I thought, 'Wow that was amazing,'' Gayle said. 'And then I started looking closer at the leaf and there was rose oil on it.'
Gayle said Holdman had gone up earlier and prepared the leaf in order to share his conviction of the power of positive thinking.
Holdman's positive thinking has helped him in his struggle with other obstacles as well. Gayle said Holdman has a hard time communicating with others because he has a speech impediment. Gayle said although he has wanted his whole life to get over his speech difficulties, Holdman said he believes the Lord has turned the weakness into a strength.
' told me, 'Don't worry about how you speak -- you speak to people through art,'' Holdman recalled.
President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, also commented on Holdman's work. According to the Church News, President Packer stated how he believed Holdman had contributed to the Palmyra Temple.
' have adorned this temple in a way that is beautiful, even inspiring,' president Packer stated in the article.
The inspiration that goes into every project is especially apparent to Holdman and the other artists as they stand around a finished stained glass window in the shop. Pulley described how different the windows look by the time they are all done. He said a certain window scene will often take on a new appearance, with a three dimensional look or a flower petal appearing to slump forward toward the individual. The color or subtle nuances in the picture are sometimes things the artists never intended, Pulley said.
'When you finally see that, you just ponder 'We didn't do that ourselves,'' Pulley said.
Holdman agreed.
'The Lord's a great partner,' he said.