In Sarah Winman's book Still Life, a wonderful character named Cressy befriends a Japanese cherry tree, Prunus serralata. Of the tree he says something like, "some bright spark had a bright idea; planted as a joyous rebellion; a symbol of everything good." I jotted down those lines in my notebook from an audio book recording so it's not exact, but it gets across the feeling of wonderment that inspired my stained glass series of earthly delights in the rest of these gilded frames. Early on in the process I was considering flowers as an overarching theme, but switched to intertidal invertebrates because I was so taken by the rare glimpses I found in photographs by Jackie and Eric, which I will write more about in future posts.
This was an example piece I did last year in my Stirling Hall mosaic course, to teach the direct method using stained glass in hopes of achieving a painterly watercolor-like effect. It was also an attempt to use a pattern, which didn't quite work but was good practice, as usual.