The Galerie offers so many opportunities to interact with people and one guest really made my day today! His wife escorted him carefully up the stairs into the Galerie and was narrating what she saw, as he was blind. I invited him to touch my stained glass pieces and explained the range of textures and shapes he could feel. It felt really good to be able to include him in the Galerie experience and to see the joy this brought to him.

The Circle of Chaos - Or Why I am Sometimes too Busy to Blog!
For the first in my new ‘Past Perfect’ series, I selected a beautiful heritage glass bowl that had been flattened in the kiln. The steep sides of the bowl left a trough about ½ inch high around the outside edge. A solder test confirmed that the glass would crack  while soldering.Cracked glass, once set in solder, is normally resilient to any further change.  The cracks, for me, represent both the fragility of relationships and the bond that supportive friends provide. .
I selected pink and white background glass which accented the bowl nicely. The flow of the pattern around the bowl was important so when one of the four pieces broke badly, I had to start again with a fresh sheet of glass. While soldering, I heard one small heat crack but was not concerned … until, in the cleaning process, the main part of the bowl came free in one piece!
This presented two challenges. The first was to break the remaining edges of the bowl out so it could be replaced. The second was to find another piece of heritage glass that suited the oval shape left behind by the bowl. I trimmed the edges of a clear glass plate and was pleased with the result.

​The off-cuts and broken pieces from this piece of glass were too beautiful and precious to throw away.so the next challenge was to re-assemble them in a new creation - a classic ‘Out of Chaos’ project, called 'Holding It Together' which is actually larger than the original piece.
This left the off-cuts from the clear glass plate which I used to create two additional pieces in my ‘Out of Chaos – Trees’ Series. This introduces a whole fresh perspective to my series of trees…I am excited about where this will go next.
The story would not be complete without a stellar ending. With the edges broken off of the original bowl, the risk of further cracking was eliminated.  Rather than go back to the original pink and white background, I found another unique piece of glass with subtle motion and blended colours and created ‘Her Majesty’.
There are a few pieces remaining from this last project which will be added to the ‘chaos’ in my storage bins for another day!

I finished 'Earth Star' this week and it is now hanging at il Primo Restaurant on Preston Street here in Ottawa. As we were leaving the restaurant after an excellent dinner, a break in the clouds created a sunset off in the distance which was reflected in the window. The amazing part was the way the star filtered and held the yellow light.