Well, we all know the answer to that. Lately it’s been harder and, to be honest, I really don’t understand. Sure, we get old and people change for one reason or another, but overall I just don’t get it. Maybe I never will. And honestly, I’m not okay with that.
And in truth, I really don’t want to be okay with it. I want to be wildly engaged in life. I want to do things, see thing, love life and relish every minute. Is that so hard? I really, really, don’t think that’s too hard for any of us.
It comes along with all those things we’ve always wanted to do with our lives — DO THEM.
It comes along with good days and bad — make it work for now and then make it better.
It comes with love. Real love — the smile you see on the face of everyone you pass.
I can do that.
I want to chat with my girlfriends weekly and make fabulous plans that may or may not come true, and that’s still okay.
I want to try everything, and I’m okay even if I don’t like it after all.
I want to be able to say what I mean — and have someone understand. And care.
This piece was made completely with mosaic glass in various shapes, colors, and sizes. The goal was to create my version of a Colorado Sunrise, including rocky land and tumbling stones.
When he called to say he’d be home early, an hour away at most, she hurriedly grabbed the signs of her weekend with passion: the voluptuously hot-colored glass, (a spontaneous deviation from her usual blues), the achingly sharp tools … the milky white adhesives, the markers (you are MINE!), the ubiquitous remnants of joy left strewn across the table, the chairs, the floors, her clothes… the Tears for Fears, the Prince, the Elton.
Closet closed now, the sweep of the vacuum, the stash of memories now buttoned up, but only a wisp away from tomorrow’s studio time.
The Wishing Tree: SOLD, 8″ x 8″, Glass, Millefiori on Wedi Board. Colorado Dawn: AVAILABLE, 7″H and 13″ W, Mexican Smalti, Mexican Smalti Tortillas, Chopped and Divoted. Mirrored Wall:NOT AVAILABLE, 33″H x 15″W, Hand-Cut Mirror and Colored Mirror; Outdoor Installation for Ciel Gallery (now demolished). Wasteland: SOLD, 18″ x 18″; Agate, Mirror, Stained Glass, Unglazed Porcelain, Aquarium Gravel, Pewter; This mosaic began with a dream. Because the image is so void-like, I included lines from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland and The Hollow Men using small pewter beads that crash into the deep. The mirror-backed “void” reflects the viewer. From the center, spirals of poetry and blank human faces form a rough heart shape, balancing the sense of desolation with a touch of hope. From the central abyss, the tesserae become less defined and increasingly chaotic, until in some spots there are no tesserae at all, but only a gouged space remaining. He Said, She Said: NOT AVAILABLE; 12″ x 7″ Drawing on Paper (created for a future project that didn’t happen). Sunbather: NFS, 10″H x 10″W by 5″ Deep; Crystal, Beads, Agate, Glass, Shell, Copper on Stone. Wild Hearts: SOLD, Unglazed Porcelain, Clay, Beads. Sunflower Table:SOLD, 46″ rectangular mosaic partially shown, Glass. The Boy with a Moon and Star: SOLD, Glass on Wedi Board. Late Bloomer:AVAILABLE, 10″H x 36″L x 18″W; Selected by and displayed at the Society of American Mosaics 2010; Glass, Metal, Mineral, Shell, Beads, Carborundum, Wire, Hand-Carved Styrofoam base by me; Through art, I hope to capture and momentarily magnify archetypal awakenings that resonate with the human spirit. I’m drawn to create with mixed materials because I want, above all, to create as full an image as I can manage. Late Bloomer pulls from the miscellanea of life — sometimes messy, sometimes arbitrary, always fascinating, always more cluttered than we had imagined. The pruning and fitting together of disparate materials becomes a way to order my own thoughts, emotions, and priorities, allowing the finished piece to serve as a kind of talisman.
Today I’m posting a few of the mosaics I’ve created over the past gazillion years. What a joy it’s been! I’ve taken a break lately due to wrist issues, but I’m slowly making my way back in and loving it. The new pieces will be smaller (grumble), but they’ll still be a joy. They range in size from 8 x 8 inches to about 14 x 20.
Life is strange. Or maybe it’s me. Does it matter which?
I started making art when I was about 6, which comes so naturally to kids. And then of course I stopped. I stopped, in fact, for 47 years. I was busy doing wonderful things of course, and as a creative type, that never stopped. But mosaic art was to be my future, and I made my first piece at the ripe old age of 30, which, perhaps surprisingly, seems to be the usual path. And suddenly I fell hard. I loved the art form, and it loved me back. This in itself isn’t unusual — it was who I was and, I believed, who I was destined to be.
And then one day some years later, I stopped cold turkey and without a thought to the contrary. I don’t remember if this made me sad or happy. I don’t remember loss. The only change I remember was that I was working on some large pieces for a mosaic flower garden, and it was a kick ass project. I loved it. No matter that I had to drive five and a half hours to make the work/play dates — and then make the drive back home three days later. No matter that the roads were filled with big ass trucks barreling south down the interstate. No matter anything, I was in my fifties, in my prime, and it was pure bliss.
And then it happened like this: I was working at home on a piece, and the large center space was filled with beautiful, ethereal circles that pulled you into a distant paradise. My circles were perfect, and I loved them.
They loved me less. My glass grinder began emitting coughing noises. I added more water and solvent and kept working to make every curve perfection. I bought a new head. I spoke to it sweetly.
But the fingers . . . the fingers that had worked with me so well over so many happy decades …. I simply couldn’t control the budding arthritis in my happily toiling hands, and in a short series of hours, they just stopped working in the flawless way they had always worked. I got it done, delivered the piece and then another, but when I finished, I just walked away. I don’t think I’ve ever walked away before. It’s not who I am, and it didn’t feel right.
A few weeks later, I made it back to Virginia to help with the installation, and spent the weekend laughing and working. It was the best of times, but I knew my mosaic days were numbered, and I didn’t like that one little bit. But what do you do? Give up? Push on? Wait for healing? I chose the latter.
Last week I was teaching a class to a great group, and they were doing so well on their own that I walked over, sat down, … and picked up my tools. I picked up my tools for the first time in years. I looked at them with joy for the first time in years.
And then I started using them. No real pain, no backing off, no icky feelings — I just worked without worry or expectations.
And then I worked the next day.
I worked by myself in the studio. And … I had fun. Some very long-lost fun, and though concessions had certainly been made, it felt good. It felt really, really, REALLY good.
And you know, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some times it’s just what we need. And sometimes it opens whole new worlds just when you needed them.
P.S. These pieces were created to fit together with those of other artists in a community project.
When I first made this trip 20+ years ago, we traveled across the Pan Am Highway, her roads broken into car-sized holes that slowed the journey considerably. It didn’t bother me an ounce, because travel teaches us truth. And during every visit since, I’ve watched Costa Rica blossom in so very many beautiful directions. I pray it will always be so.
And now, once again, we’re here! First, we’ll enjoy a beautiful three-hour journey through the countryside. Along the way, we’ll pass small houses with colorful laundry hanging, stalls selling creches and life-size deer figures, and vast fields of sugar cane. The backlit fronds of the cane will compete for our attention with their feathery tufts.
The roads are hilly and winding, with lushly planted homegrown guardrails of Dracena protecting against the steepest drops. Fortunately, traffic is mild. A small white dog trots up the road; a hilltop palm missing most of its fronds arcs leeward in the mist. I spy a rounded tree literally covered with white birds — at least 50 of them — and again, I wonder.
Halfway through the drive, we stop for coffee and the skies open wide for the twenty minute afternoon rain. When we pile back into the van, mist has settled onto the hairpin turns taking us down the mountain, but not enough to obscure the drive of banana, coffee, bougainvillea, citrus trees, dracena, palms, unfamiliar tropical fauna with giant leaves in every shape, blooming brush, and one surprising stand of three-needled pines.
Bridges become more frequent as we cross rocky streams and rivers, each path only one-laned, making a gentle dance of transport vans and the occasional bus or truck. Most of the locals walk, wisely against the traffic but still along the road with neither sidewalk nor shoulder for safety. Small signs advertise local businesses: “Many Meaty Dishes. All Meatless. All Tasty.” The rafters of a porch along the roadside support 20 bunches of bananas hanging by ropes. We pass through several small towns, and as the 5:00 sunset moves in, the people double in number — there is so much walking through the nightfall, and I hope hard that each arrives home safely.
We reach Finca Luna Nueva at what seems like 10 or 11 PM, though it is actually closer to 6:00, and we ascend the gravel just as moonstain moves in, spreading her welcome across the sky.
The lovely ladies of the lodge feed us well — offering chicken with saffron rice, soup, organic spinach, juices and salad from the farm, and I’m fast asleep before 9:00, tucked away in my little cabin with Costa Rican breezes blowing through.
I pray it will always be so.
P.S. Twenty years of visiting Costa Rica regularly, and I’ve never, ever tired of it. Bring it on in January 2024!
And so it goes. Twenty-one days of beauty, bliss, fascination, sandy toes, storms, old friends, new friends, deep thoughts, waves, madly endless talks, creating, writing, wonder, books, poetry, deep sleeps, love, hugs, love, hugs, more love and more hugs. See you next year.
A young man came into the gallery one day and, like many, stood with his mouth agape staring at the art on the walls. “What is this?” he asked. “It’s a mosaic,” I answered with a smile. “Well, how do you make it? Where do you get all these little pieces of glass?” “We cut them,” I said with a little glow.” “Cut them? You mean you have to cut every one of these pieces?” “Yes,” I said. “Every piece.” “Oh man,” he said,” he said. “Why would anyone do this? There’s got to be a way to streamline this process. Somebody needs to sell the glass already cut. Doesn’t anyone sell pre-cut glass?” “Well, possibly,” I said, ‘but then I wouldn’t be interested.”
And there you have the answer in a nutshell. I make art because it’s hard.
During the classes I teach, new students will often take on a familiar stricken look when they first start cutting. I tell them to relax and cut for the pleasure of exploration — that making mosaics means learning to love the process. And the process is hard.
Some might say I like a hard life in general. I’m a good one for trudging through the minutiae of a situation, considering every possibility, and then selecting the most time- and soul-consuming avenue. To me, this simply equates to actually living my life rather than just going through the motions. It’s the same way with cooking, planning, selecting (and decorating) a Christmas tree, traveling, thinking, loving, and art. Either I do it to the max, or I don’t do it at all. Otherwise, what have I gained? What have I given?
One of my favorite quotes is from the movie “A League of Their Own,” when Gina Davis admits that something is hard. Tom Hanks says “Of course it’s hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The Hard is what makes it Good.”
He’s so right.
It’s a funny thing about “easy.” There are many things I do because they’re “easy” for me, like sorting or folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher or writing a press release — I can have them done in the time it takes to think “oh — I should do this.” Accomplishment is a powerful feed-good, and we can rack up way more of the easies than the hards. But does that make them good? Well, no. None of my easies will ever make it to my Very Favorite Things list.
But give me something hard: determining and creating the ideal ratio of perfect cuts to “human touch” in art, cooking the (very) occasional meal that takes alllllll day, raising a child, or growing the balls to be my fullest self, and I’m all over it.
So yeah. I love mosaic because it’s damn hard. I think we all need to love and engage in something that tests us, that pushes us flat up against the wall and says, “Do your best. Now.”
Pam Goode Writes 