I walked into the studio, greeted by the scents of paint and
glue. Busy Bees is a colorful playground for the creative artist, and it makes
me smile every time. They offer a variety of crafting options, and this time I
tried something new: mosaic.
I chose a square piece of wood as
the background for my creation and went to work picking out tiny chunks of tile to glue
on to the wood into a pattern. After the tile pieces were glued on, I would be
sent home with grout (the color of my choosing) to fill in the spaces between
the tiles to finish the piece.
The assortment of colors and shapes
overwhelmed me at first. It calmed me to start with a loose pattern. I glued
little square mirrors in alternating sequence around the edges. Silver. Gold.
Silver. Gold. My heartbeat slowed as I got into the rhythm of creating. Faced
with a wall full of bins in every color of tile pieces, the design started to
form in my mind. I cut a tiny square into two uneven triangles of green. Funny
how going from a square to a triangle changed things. I was inspired to cut
some more. Next, I cut off the corner of an odd blue piece of tile and it
formed a pentagon. When I halved the clover-shaped pieces, they became figure
eights.
Changing the shapes gave me a sense
of control. While I allowed some pieces to remain whole, I caused others to be
broken. All the colorful pieces, broken and whole, show up more clearly when
surrounded by the black grout of emotion’s dark depths.
I call it
“Ordered Chaos.”
A single clear stone belongs in the middle. I may not
understand the stone fully, but I recognize its characteristics. For me, the clear
stone is like a steaming cup of coffee first thing in the morning. It’s the
smell of the bookstore where my writers’ group meets. Sharing hugs with my
daughter and long-distance phone conversations with my son. It’s when I send
the words “I love you, babes” in a text to my husband. Bible and prayer time.
Sharing time with friends. Each of these represent wholeness yet are pieces of
the whole of me.
What does
your center stone represent?
