On turning 50 while sick in bed...

Even though I've spent my birthday in bed with Griffin (both of us are sick), I'm not too sick to feel enormously grateful for all the love and greetings that everyone has sent me -- through email, facebook, phone-calls, visits, gifts, and flowers.  Thank you to everyone!  I am so lucky to have a life full of so many good people!

Here's a lovely picture of an acacia tree in bloom to remind us all of spring and regrowth (acacia was always in bloom on my birthday when I was a kid in Santa Cruz, so it holds a special place in my birthday memories).  Too bad I cannot convey its extraordinary fragrance through an image!
Happy Birthday, Marlowe

Thinking of the Ocean

Here's a little something that I just finished.  The clear rounded pieces are sea glass from my prowling in Maine.

Happy Valentine's Day!

As I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I love gathering and gleaning on the beach.  With all my years of hunching over to look for treasure, I have collected a number of heart-shaped stones that now live on my crowded windowsill and remind me of warmer days.  Here are a couple of my favorite stones:

And on the subject of things I love....  Even though I have been slowed in my window production by my return to work, I am quite pleased with what I have been able to finish recently.  It's a red tree with its roots settled into pieces of brown sea glass.  Tell me what you think!

Anticipating a Birthday

February is my birth month.  


It's a sketchy month in New England -- so I'm usually fighting my winter blues all month and feeling funny about aging.


Well, this year is even trickier.  I'm turning 50.  


In addition to spending a lot of time looking back, thinking about what is ahead, and trying desperately to live in the moment, I'm just plain old longing for warmer weather, green things growing, and time by the sea.  So, here are a few shots from the ocean visits I had last year -- to cheer and remind me of places I want to see when the weather warms up. 

Martha's Vineyard in June

Morning low tide, Southwest Harbor, Maine

Beneath a building on the water in Eastport, Maine

Still under that building in Eastport, Maine

Ivy growing under a building in Eastport, Maine

On making things and memories...

Making stained glass mosaics has taught me something interesting about how my brain works:  I often work on mosaics in my study with the door open in the evenings while David and Griff watch TV or a movie.  I can hear what they're watching, and sometimes I even follow the narrative, but I can't see the screen. Often, I don't really pay attention and the voices just wash over and around me as I work.  I have discovered that days later when I set about grouting the piece I had been working on in the evenings, the story or plot of the TV show comes back in detail, as if I had been sitting in the room with the guys while it was on.  So curious!  I should have known that I was so impressionable.


And, speaking of remembering while making mosaics....

I made this window (inspired by California poppies and lupines) for my friend Lissa, whom I have been lucky to have in my life for the last 40 years.  We met in the fourth grade and spent much of our free time horse-back riding and roaming in the beautiful fields and forests of Northern California.   As I worked on this design, I kept flashing on detailed memories of acacia blooming in february, of the cement ship at Seascape, of poppies and lupine blooming in the spring, of La Selva beach and the Santa Margarita trestle, of riding bareback in the fields above the Bayview hotel, and so much more.  Ah, what a beautiful place to grow up!

New work

My sabbatical is fast drawing to a close.  This makes me feel frantic to finish some of my projects, get my office organized, and prep for classes -- so, I'm not sleeping too well these days.  There have been a few late nights playing with glass.  Here are some of the results:

I had to try another window with the flame shapes that I showed in my last posting -- I love the lively quality of these shapes!

I'm working on another transom window here --left a lot of grout in the textured clear glass because I love the graphic effect when the light shines through it.

This is just a small piece I'd done a while back, but my dad made a frame and my mom antiqued it (unfortunately none of that shows in this picture -- grrr!)  How lucky am I to have such helpful parents?!!

I also decided that the floor cloth/rug in my kitchen needed a little pick-me-up (I'd painted it a couple of years ago with a floral pattern that had been dulled by regular wear and wash).  So, here's the new rug -- the design is entirely different from the "original" -- but I have no "before" pictures :^(

It looks small, but it's actually 5'by 8' -- so it took the whole weekend.

Just two weeks before I start teaching -- I suspect many of my days next week will be spent in the office at work.

A New Year

Here's a new window for a new year:

This window went through a lot of stages -- and the final result is nothing like the design I started with.


Happy 2012, all!