Monthly Archives: August 2023

2″ x .5″, found objects

Hopefully this one speaks for itself.  A gray, wet day has some beauty, if only in the muffled sounds of cars passing on the roads outside.  I couldn’t get the focus right, but somehow that seems appropriate.

1″ x .75″, glass

I’m reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma after my daughter read it and convinced me to read it too.  What I’m taking away from it is that we’re messing up our world and our food systems in even more ways than I had understood, and that as we choose our food, unless we grow it all ourselves with only rainwater, we’re simply choosing between shades of bad. Beautiful things too, unless they’re temporary earth sculptures, are shades of bad.  This pendant is made with slag, the beautiful and variegated blue glass by-product of iron production in the forests of New York, and glass tiles, the even more vibrant and likely even more environmentally damaging result of glass production that’s using up our silica and requires mineral mining and exorbitant energy use.

1.25″ diameter, found objects

I don’t think most people would think this is treasure, but for me, it’s gold.  The photo doesn’t even do this rusty washer justice. It has pits and valleys, rough spots and bright yellows and reds. And in the middle, some shiny green glass frit. These are the treasures you can find on the ground in a rainstorm with your cellphone flashlight at Snow Farm.

2″ x .5″, found objects

This tiny level came with a french cleat that I bought to hang a project, and I loved its size.  Fits in any pocket, and I found it was actually good reminder for one of my favorite goals, balance.  The idea of finding level is complex when it’s a life that has to be leveled and not a painting.  But even the tiny level in my pocket was rarely balanced.  I made this pendant to explore, once again, how it feels to be precariously balanced and to know that if just one thing falls out of place, the rest will come crashing down too.  But I found something to be true of this little guy that’s also true in my life. When it’s out and about, it’s never in balance, but when it’s resting, it finds level.

1″ x 1.25″, glass and stone

I have vague memories of going to a place called Lake Placid when I was a kid.  This week I’m teaching stained glass at a summer camp, and during the day the lake here is anything but placid.  Kids are swimming, screaming, singing and running.  But in the mornings and the evenings the lake is calm and beautiful.  It’s the centerpiece of the mural that my friend is designing with campers, and it seems to be central to the happy memories that so many people have of camp.  The stones in this pendant are from the lake, and the glass is scrap from campers’ projects.