Last weekend Tom and I went out to the Mustard Seed Village with a crowd of volunteers to help get the site ready for our Celtic retreat in two weeks time.
Sweeping back the chaos
I was amazed at how quickly the messy chaos of weeds and broken glass could be transformed. In just a couple of hours of mowing, weed whacking and sweeping we were almost ready for the retreat.
Forrest and Kayra Inslee – our transformers of chaos into order
Now we have a creative task ahead of us and we need your help. Some of the shattered glass is still adhering to the window framework creating this rather beautiful pattern. We would like to transform it into an art piece, that flows out of reflection and meditation, but what? Our creative juices are rather limited in this direction and we were wondering what suggestions others might have.
Glass shards for attractive patterns
What do you think we could create that would refract or reflect the light and provide a hope-filled reminder of what has happened here? Your suggestions are appreciated.
Perhaps you have suggestions for the myriad of small shards now collected into a bucket awaiting inspiration. We have thought of colouring the broken shards and creating a mosaic pattern on a clear background or imbedded in concrete, but what type of paint should we use? We don’t want to introduce toxic chemicals that create new polluting problems.
We need your help. Can you be creative for us and give some suggestions for an art project at our Celtic retreat.
6 comments
One Idea would be to paint a background on paper and adhere the shards to that rather than paint the glass itself
Thanks for the suggestion Vicki – cello sheets would probably be even better as they would give a translucent appearance.
Easy Peasy. From Ikea or elsewhere, buy large drinking glasses that will nest – one with a greater circumfrence. Nest the two glasses and put the broken glass between them. Put a candle in the middle of the empty central glass. Voila.
Beauty out of brokenness.
We did that here with old glass we dig up when we planted our community garden. We have eight of those which look like we could have paid a lot of money for them.
That sounds beautiful – and we could incorporate it as part of our liturgy.
How about gluing them onto different sized squares of perspex sheet (from a diy store) and hanging them high in the trees? If you wanted to add some colour maybe use coloured inks on the perspex before gluing on the glass over the top?
A lifting up of brokenness to create new ways of seeing the bounty of the environment.
A lifting up of vessels of light.
Kate I love this concept and the creativity of your idea. Definitely something we will experiment with