I love glass. Especially colored glass. Paperweights, windows, vases, sculpture. Good glass has a purity, clarity and vibrancy. Good glass sings. It sparkles or glows; reflects, diffuses, splits and intensifies light. It is a liquid that doesn't seem like a liquid. It is strong and fragile at the same time. Mostly I love the colors that one finds in glass pieces.Glass is made from very humble materials including sand. But put through intense heat, it changes. When metals are added, it has the ability to take on color. While it is hot, it reacts to how it is treated, becoming malleable. When glass is cooled, it needs light to show off its best features. So much beauty can be pulled from humble beginnings, an intense environment, and craftsmanship.
We start humbly. One can say, at times that life is a crucible. We are crafted by our experiences and most importantly, by our reactions to our experiences. I hope that the colors of my life, when complete, are blue and green, with a dash of heated colors like red and yellow. I hope that my colors will catch the light beautifully and brightly.
2 comments:
What a wonderful bit of writing. I hope that your colors come true.
I've been thinking for some time of adding onto my house using high-mass techniques, either in rammed earth or discarded tires packed hard with dirt, then stuccoed over. The benefits to these high mass structures come in when you want to heat or cool them, because they insulate you against the outside superbly. The walls are typically 2 to 3 feet thick.
For light, people will often take wine bottles, greens and blues, reds, clears, frosted whites, and yellow-browns and lay them where the bottom of one bottle is on the outside of the wall, and a matched bottle will be on the inside of the wall. (You can see an example at www.earthship.net.)
As a person who appreciates glass, I thought you might like to see how people are beautifully and cleverly re-using glass that was made for one purpose, but found another.
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