Art for a Cause

I’ve been making jewelry from beach glass for several years, and enjoying it. I’m interested in anything related to beach combing and making things with those finds, which is how I entered the annual Junque Arte show at the local art museum. It was fascinating and inspiring to see what others made and to get some feedback on my jewelry. When I saw an ad in a local free paper, the North Coast Journal, about a charity auction to benefit another local arts group, Creative Sanctuary, I decided to participate and create my first “art piece.”

This involved going by Sanctuary and paying $25 for a storage tray that was originally for lead type. The organization received a large donation of the storage trays from a former printer and the idea is to get people to decorate these trays as a sort of diorama, and then return them to Sanctuary, where they’ll be displayed and put in a silent auction between Dec. 1-21.*

Having never done anything like this, I first sat down and drew diagrams of ideas. I ended up with lots of very complex intersecting figures, and interrelated layers, thinking of the rows of type drawer compartments as archaeological layers.

I realized that I was trying to put too many ideas together, and a display of things from the sea would be enough. I have a wide range of things to share, and knew I’d be able to assemble a collection to share. I set my string and watercolors aside, and gave the entire drawer a coat of white paint.

I chose a color scheme and painted the drawer a couple more times to get it looking good. Once it dried, I could begin organizing my “Little Museum and Library of the Sea.” I like the idea of showing a little of everything that I’ve collected along the shore, but it all had to be small enough to fit in the spaces. Before long, every surface and some of the floor of my work area was full of tools and pieces. I dug sea glass out of all my cupboards and trays, dumped out my bags of pottery, fossils, crystals, plastic bits, and trash. I opted not to include the trash, though some of it is colorful. No cartoon superheroes or cowboys and Indians that washed up on shore. They were mostly too big.

After a while, I realized that I’d need a guide to what went where, so that I could remove pieces to glue in place without forgetting where they all went.

I rearranged a few things as I secured them in their final places, and I added a few details, like the fragment painted with a man’s face added to the map of Inverness, and the “painting” (a piece of china) hanging over the library chair. I’m happy with the finished work. Everything in this comes from the beachcombing Jonathan and I have done all around the world. I didn’t keep track of how many hours this represents, because I had fun doing it, getting absorbed in selecting items and deciding where to put them. I didn’t think too much about time, other than getting it finished before the due date.

I’ll return and update this post with what it raised for Sanctuary.

Here are some close-ups:

*Auction proceeds are shared with the maker. I could recover my registration fee, and possibly more.