Sailboat and Jet Plane, 2.0
After 68 years, the artist updates a favorite creation
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Winds of Change
Yesterday, Darlene organized a neighborhood art party at the Janet Sams Shattered Glass Art Gallery in Cape Coral.
Twelve of us arrived at the studio ready to create art out of broken glass. We are normally neighbors who play pickleball and gather at each other’s homes for seasonal parties.
In her greeting, Janet urged us to approach the session like children. That was a relief, because each of us brought our own adult anxieties to the task of Creating Art.
Darlene and her sister Deb have done fantastic work at Janet’s studio, so I knew the drill. I brought a print of a painting I did in second grade of a sailboat and a jet plane.
The original is about 3x4 feet and has hung in various rooms where I have lived during the past 68 years.
All that time, I have never been able to answer this question: What the red blob is at the top of the painting? Is it the jet’s burning fuel, or is it a flag atop the boat’s mast? No clue.
As I assembled pieces of glass yesterday, I felt as if the boy who’d done the original was looking over my shoulder. Or maybe I was looking over his.
Lennie and I were in complete agreement on which piece to add next, and where. As a teenager, I spent endless happy hours sailing a Sailfish at Bearcamp Pond in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. So I knew how the sails needed to flutter and swell in a breeze.
I had planned to keep the red blob ambiguous, but as time ran out in our play time, I knew the jet had to move to the left. That meant a decision, after all these years:
The red blob is part of the jet, not the sailboat.
That felt wonderful, as if the plane were set free to fly off on its own. I placed the upper wing slightly beyond the edge of the glasswork.
Darlene and our neighbor Cherry will drive back to Cape Corral tomorrow to gather the finished artworks. Janet will have affixed the glass to the frames with resin. Our works will be ready for hanging.
Onward.