Margaret and I lived in the Pacific Northwest for three years. We explored the coast, the Cascades, the Columbia River Gorge, and the waterfalls; and we walked beneath big beautiful trees.

A client, who lives among those forests, saw the tree we made earlier in 2013 and requested one of her own. She sent us an image of a tree she had imagined into being. I took that image into the silence of a retreat at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville.

A design emerged. It was adequate. It would have made a fine tree, but I had time so I revised the whole design again and again. I had to get those swirling tree limbs in away that it would be my version of her amazing tree. So I sat with my pencil, paper, and erasure, and a wave of joy flowed through me. I wish I could say all my designs create the same experience, but that is just not the case. They don't make me sad, and I do smile upon my work when I feel I have done something well… but nothing like that before.

After that it was choices of color and glass. For me the key choices was to put green at the end of the branches and to trust Margaret to create the blue sky, the flowing stream, and the bark details. The Jesuit Center has an amazing tree that just may have influenced me. Here I am enveloped by its weeping branches.

And here is a video of how we created our first tree of 2013 ~~~~>

 

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