Reclamation & Re-creation

While cleaning some of my metal components for new art pieces this morning, I started thinking about old vs new.  These hinges are so beautiful to me with their patinas, scuffs, and scars.  They’re what remains of the stories they’ve been a part of.  Sadly, we often don’t view ourselves with our scars and histories as beautiful. I believe however that there are many of us who only see beauty when we look at others.  Give me the laugh lines, the scars, gray hairs, and age marks…. They’re much more interesting and contribute to the uniqueness of a person. They don’t take away from their worth, they add. There is value in the journey and what it creates along the way. I wish we could see that in ourselves.  I certainly struggle with it when I look in the mirror.

With these projects, I always experience a little bit of heartbreak and some panic when I have to shine up some spots on these beautiful old pieces.  I don’t want to lose the essence of their journey.  However, to add new you must lose some of the old.  You cannot physically bond the two together in places without change. I must be very careful though as to not take away too much of the past.  It is like us as people as we grow.  We must shed some of the past, but we also must remember where we came from and what we’ve been through. It is a part of us after all and why we are who we are today.  The pathway of growth is seldom easy. It can be super rocky and painful. Yet, we must continue forward to get to the new.

As the pieces grow and the new glass adds, there are mistakes that are made. (Broken glass, cuts, burns, a slip of a tool creates a new scar on the metal, etc) Almost every new piece is an experiment of sorts because every one is different than the last.  I can use the knowledge I’ve accumulated from past failures (or as I call them, learning experiences) but there’s almost always a surprise or two. It can be frustrating, dirty, and trial filled trying to figure out how to get the glass to stick to the old piece.  However, when I can persevere through all that growth and discovery, learning more and more along the way, something not quite old and not quite new emerges. A reclamation and re-creation, combining the past stories with the new, blossoms into a newly formed art piece. Then, the finished art itself continues to create new opportunities for more stories in the future as people interact with it.  The journey of growth and discovery continues on.