the art of assembling the pieces
It was obvious I should have taken the Artist path instead of the military. I was always making things, assembling odds and ends from button collections, junk drawers; tearing apart music boxes and motorized toys. I sketched and painted, raiding mom’s art supplies and asking her advice. But she would say art school squashes originality.
Or I should have trained to be a Drafter, constantly fascinated by my dad’s architectural drawing tools in his office. Prism shaped rulers with mysterious measurements and magical slide rules. Numerous mechanical pencils, triangles, French curves, and hinging angles. But he would say hands off.
After high school, I couldn’t make up my mind for a career. The dichotomy between these two choices is not lost on me; it either mirrored the opposite contributions of my DNA, or reflected the uncompromising clash of opposite people. Nature or Nurture? Still unanswerable and moot anyway.
Eventually, the ultimate irony came about even though I had avoided both of these interests. I pursued independence from the expected, rebelling against both to join the Navy. After brain injury I was barely capable enough to hold a job down for longer than a few months.
I had drifted, was staying with a friend’s nephew for a while, with $14 left to my name. No future, the wolf at the door. I found an ancient pair of pliers, borrowed a soldering iron, bought a few pieces of scrap glass, a roll of solder and copper foil, and a small bottle of patina. I spent a day to make a small box, designing birds on the top with greenery on the bottom. The pieces were so tiny because I had so little to work with, pouring my heart and soul into the art. I asked for a ride to the city the next day, walked to several galleries until I found one that paid me on the spot, $35. With that I made several more boxes, made some more money.
Moving not long after, I carried my small toolbox with me as I boarded a Greyhound bus. As I was trying to stash it below my seat without too much noise, an older man across the aisle gently laughed at me and asked what that was. I answered, “I’m an artist, these are my tools.”
I remember his face changed a little more serious as he thought for a second, then said, “you hold onto those.”
I am a glass artist. What could be more appropriate to my life than taking a perfectly good sheet of glass, breaking it apart into tiny pieces, and trying to reassemble it into something valuable? Applying the same logic for everything else, I focused on making the outside appear the way it should. I needed to be someone, so became driven for success in the art world, as if the outer shell of an important career would fill-in the empty value inside and justify my existence. As for the chaos in my head, my only strategy could be to pretend a façade of calmness on the outside, like someone overcoming paralysis who has to mimic the action of walking. Yet it was all backwards, outside-in.
Yearning for a family, I tried to find the right guy in order to fit one together. I became wholly focused on saving to buy a house to own, to be grounded on some place I could keep, not knowing I was actually craving the security of a home. If I could maintain the whole picture, be worthwhile enough to be married, care for my kids, work a job, buy a car, keep a house clean, then I could be acceptable. This was all backwards, each facet of life approached from the outside in. I went down all these paths as far as one could go, to exhaustion. But I cant fault my younger self now, trying to make a way in the world. In other words, it was a hard road to the next epiphany: the richness of life comes from experiencing moments, not which moments happen and which don’t.
I thought the feeling of Love was a picture, a thing. My picture of what a husband should be was … all that. Much of the time, my first husband and I had something good. But when my guy didn’t resemble that though, my frustration with him caused so much arguing. I believed things had to be just so, and if they weren’t, I was so anxious and it was always his fault. The fighting ironically wrecked what love is really all about. Deep down, I so much wanted family, but the responsibilities to commit to our young family became my ultimatum to him, another wrong way to start the foundation of a marriage.
But my children, I can only begin to explain how much they changed my life for the better.
Life is what happens while you’re planning something else. (John Lennon)
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. (Ghandi)
Finding the depth of life, what love looks and feels like, was the most substantial, amazing gift; passed to me so easily and freely by two sets of tiny hands.
Even before each of my next two daughters was born, I found myself tying my heart to each of their lives, their future. Before, my thoughts and existence had always revolved around my survival, what was best for only me. Now even what I ate and drank affected someone else directly. Babies are born so vulnerable, they needed everything I am and they needed the best I could try to be. They became first, and decided when or if I slept, when or if I left the house, where or if I would go. But in return we both merged into the same clock, the same life for a few years, and I could see the world through brand new eyes.
Afternoon sun shines warmly through the living room window, skims over the top of the couch, reveals some lazy dust floating peacefully in the quiet house, and lights up my 9 month old daughter's tufts of delicate brunette hair. She has been studying a tiny colorful empty double-sided box, the same size as her tiny palms, for 20 minutes. Little fingers working the top, figuring this all out with precocious attention span. This moment is so much more important than a schedule. My next younger daughter was born with brilliant blond curly hair, and tomboy laughter. She is a toddler, standing in front of the toy jeep driven by her older sister, who sits knowing she has all the power right now. My younger one, daring, knows she stands with all the power right now. I hope they each remember they always do. When they are in school, I am pleased when I get notes from the teacher, telling me one is talking in class or the other can't sit still, interrupting, because I know them, and that’s what they do when they are happy. Both of my daughters walk around with my heart in their hands and all I can do is pray for their well-being.
And that so happens to be the point of it all.
…
After a decade chasing success as a glass artist, I found that the profession was feast or famine. I needed a more reliable paycheck for my young family so I attended a technical college to be a Certified Drafter, was able to complete a Certificate. I continued glass art part-time. Insecurity had kept me from pursuing art or drafting, but brokenness brought me back to where I should have gone all along.
Years of self-employed contemplation in my studio gave me plenty of time to reflect on my parents influence. A baton had been passed, the opposites had been combined in me to find some way of survival, in this case a literal survival. My mother had struggled against sexist discrimination and competition in the art world. Ultimately, her imagination controlled her and broke her mind. Somehow I was able to harness my own inherited creativity and become a recognized artist. Perhaps I became her validation, in my generation overcoming the hurdles she had to face in hers. Every day I used my father’s architectural templates, reading his name precisely scratched by his hand onto the side of each one. Now I was handling his same tools with a competent exactness. It became a connection with him; perhaps he approved. I always believed they tried the best they could. Sometimes children can be a hope for the future; on some level I felt my successes and survival were not just for me, but for my mom and dad too. I saw the ghosts of their hands in the shape of my own. I found forgiveness; perhaps they found peace.
The Tangible Illusion of Light (poem)
Gold is untarnished yellow, but feigns
dawn's igniting of soft edges behind a mountain cloud,
or sunset's beacon flashing reflected from home's far window.
A diamond’s clear flash, an imitation
bright glints of blinding sun across the afternoon shore,
or a star's brilliantly precise ray through eternal night.
A sapphire is velvet marine, just resembles
the limitless horizon between azure sky and tropic sea,
or the vertigo of fathomless water below suspended feet.
An emerald is tantalizing green, only mimics
the vividly penetrating beam warming a rainforest's singular tree,
or the disarmingly beautiful captivation of a strangers eyes.
A rainbow of delicate gems pales in the palm,
on a summer afternoon porch shaded by stately trees
and a butterfly sanctuary of whimsical flowers,
calm breezes stirring blue shadow leaves
brushing intimately on white shiny paint.
Does grasping for distracting illusions
Clinging to bright stones for life.
hold fast the spirit
By accident jewels mirror life's ephemeral essence,
But letting go releases light of life unfolding.
…
I was worth nothing, but perhaps I could create beauty that would be cherished. The pure color of glass and light lasts a thousand years. I was drawn to the craft, so technical and precise, the trade essentially the same as a thousand years back. Sometimes I was an artist; sometimes it felt I was pretending to be, creating the identity from sheer effort. My motivation was a recognition-craving ego. Insecurity persisted when I knew only how to craft trinkets and door panels from catalogs. I was driven to be a Master Craftsman though, trying to learn as much as I could. I begged an apprentice position in a glass studio, learning to make larger windows. Even though I only lasted at the job six or seven months, I leveraged that experience to work at another studio, learning more.
I wanted to be Important with a Name, to have Substance. My dream was to be published in the Quarterly, a magazine devoted to the best in the Stained-Glass industry, its glossy pages documenting technical information, architectural wonders, and gems of talent. Other glass artists dismissed me pretty quick though, my work too small, and too ordinary.
Today’s surrender is tomorrow’s freedom. My children needed me 100% so I had to reluctantly put the studio in storage. At first my contribution to family was sprinkled with resentment, but life revealed more important things than ego.
Ego, fluffed from my career’s fleeting recognition, was told to sit down awhile. My timorous Self-Esteem, a façade validated by producing tokens for the world, was put away awhile. The priority of self-preservation, prone to resentment, was ignored awhile. Self-Gratification, never satisfied by a quick rush from the temporary, was told to wait awhile. Self-centered Goals, a calendar filled because being empty is worthless, was taken down from the wall for awhile. The Grand Illusion was cleared away.
My daughters patiently showed me how much deeper and richer was family and love. So many times I’ve said to them they taught me more than I could have ever shown them. Eventually, a few years later, I was able to dust off the tools. Grateful just to make any little thing, I felt free to pursue any idea instead of calculating market value or hours spent, or if it was gallery worthy. Taking a chance to enter a professional glass contest, I risked designing a unique panel inspired by my city of rust. It was anti-beauty, portraying steel and grit but glimmering with pure blue colors of potential renewal. The glass cutting was precise, the leadwork tiny and perfect. Success came when I wasn't striving for it, when I was true to myself, and it won a National level Grand Prize.
I bought an old farmhouse to remodel. Surrounded and overwhelmed by new, bigger houses, my quaint cottage had relinquished the farm acreage to the city and surrendered to white siding and indoor plumbing. Hugged by just a tiny quaint backyard, it was bordered by a sagging carriage house, mature cherry trees, flower beds, and a postcard white picket fence. I’m divorced, my kids are grown; the house is empty.
I find a puppy; a black and white spotted Aussie blue heeler. Smart and energetic, she needs out a lot, playfully nosing through winter snowdrifts. Spring’s thaw has brought unexpected tulips and daffodils popping up everywhere in the new grass sprinkled with cherry blossoms, and the small private scene bursts with beauty like a Monet painting hidden in a Goodwill. I watch from the tilting porch as the little pup scurries among the stems, pouncing on the spring blooms in new happiness with the same glee she had found in snowbanks.
My most recent art commission is overdue, scattered in incomplete phases throughout the house: drawings in the dining room, cut glass on worktables in the living room, fusing pieces melting in the basement kilns, curing cemented panels overflowing the carriage house into the driveway sun. Taking a break for breakfast, I pour a bowl of cereal, unwrapping clear plastic from the Quarterly lying neglected on the table for days. Eating while casually thumbing through, I discover a whole page dedicated to some of my work. Unbeknownst to me, I had made it.