A TABLE IN NEED OF SOME ATTENTION AND THE TRIBUTE - ONE “PEACE” AT A TIME
One of the aspects of Happiest Kid Finds is creating statement pieces from at least 70% of repurposed materials. I am quite interested in collaborating with clients, with the understanding, that these pieces are so special because of the passion that goes into the creation of them. Because I'm using materials that come from different sources and different times, some passion projects take years before coming to fruition. The story behind the Dragonfly Shelves is a perfect example.
For this project. it was a creation three years in the making. It started with the loss of a small canary-yellow parakeet that had been given to me.
The bird was found outside after nights of rain during a particularly icy January in Connecticut. The family didn't want to keep it because of their dog; they were afraid of what he might do to the bird if he had the chance. Apparently, he made attempts, so I agreed to take her and brought her home one evening in February of 2021.
When I arrived from work, she was at the bottom of her cage. My heart instantly sank. I had her for almost a year, and she was finally starting to let her guard down and come around. A feeling of failure and deep sadness took hold of me. I was utterly crushed.
I looked online for some sense of understanding of what could have been the cause of death; with little birds, they are susceptible to so many things. One bit of information that I found that always stuck with me is that for survival, many small animals, birds in particular, often mask illness very well. I wondered....
Whatever it was, I couldn’t understand why her death hit me as hard as it did. Something had been triggered that I was unaware of at that moment, but I thought with a tribute of some sort, I’d find some closure. I might be reaching, but a part of me thinks back to the biggest changes I've experienced that usually occurred within a year of having suffered some form of loss. With that in mind, this was the prelude to life-altering events that would take place the following year when I’d move to Wilmington, NC to start a new life.
I wasn’t sure whether I was going to build or paint something for the tribute, but I acquired materials that I thought might be used. For instance, I bought a crate filled with sheets and shards of colored glass at a salvage warehouse in Connecticut, but without a real plan, I brought the crate home and just set it aside.
When I moved to Wilmington toward the end of 2023, and set up the gallery, all of the tools and materials were moved into the workshop at the back of the gallery.
Forward to the Spring of '25, a neighbor brought over an extendable table, and asked if I would be interested in using it for a project. It was missing a leaf and had a few warped spots on the top, but the base was in good shape and pretty solid overall, so I accepted it.
That too was set aside, but not for too long. These unrelated material acquisitions, awaiting assignment, were brought back to the fore when I was throwing away flimsy metal frames and breaking down sheets of glass before putting them in the dumpster. I had an idea that the colored glass and table were perfect for.
As soon as my hammer broke apart the first section of glass, that pain of loss resurfaced. The fragmented image made from the impact was the exact description of how I felt when I found that little bird at the bottom of her cage, now combined with emotions collected over the last few years up to that Spring afternoon. Without going off onto a wild tangent, I will note that entrepreneurship is rife with challenges that truly separates those who talk about doing things from those who actually take the leap, and if nothing else, at least try. I took comfort in this, that along with my Faith, when I stood back to look at the big picture, I found that the entrepreneurs who stick with it eventually come through the other side. Setback after setback, this is one comfort that has helped me immensely. But, the sharp pang that I was feeling was a result of events that left me feeling exposed and a bit raw.
Following my instinct, I placed a sheet of clear vinyl over the shards of broken glass and traced the patterns, thus creating a plan for the project. Below is a 9-minute meditative video of this pattern tracing.
The dimensions of the plan worked nicely with the table that was gifted to me, where I envisioned a mosaic.
I started to prep the table. I applied paint remover to a section of the top, but it didn’t remove the paint very well, so I tested an area with a sander. That’s when I realized that the top was made of MDF with a fine wood veneer applied to the surface. At that point, my determination to make something out of this took over, and I decided to keep sanding, stripping off the terra cotta color, and forming a rectangular inset on the surface.
Once again, life had other plans, and so the tribute was shelved.
As the year progressed, more challenges and a bit more heartache presented themselves, and I had to reconcile myself to certain matters and mindsets that were prohibitive. To move forward, however, I resigned myself to the fact that it was essential to finish old projects and make peace with the past.
Once I created a path to restart the project and with 3/4 of 2025 over, back to the table I went. I cleared off the junk that was being piled on it, then pulled out the crate of colored glass along with my tools, bought some adhesive, grout, and paint. I copied the pattern onto the inset and proceeded to set in the pieces of glass as close to the original design as possible.
The image started to come to life with each fragment. After a week of setting the pieces, I applied the grout and painted the rest of the table dark brown to contrast nicely with the colorful glass.
It’s finally done…well, mostly There are a few more things that I’d like to add, but the guts of the tribute are in place. It no longer has the machine-fabricated polish - not for this piece. It's rough around the edges now, just like its maker... wink-wink, nudge-nudge ;) I don’t think anything is truly finished until it’s out of my reach. At least there’s a sense of peace with this now. I can move forward.