Member-only story
“Three Cosmic Sculptures”
Day 194 of my artwork retrospective
You may recall that the other day I mentioned I’d worked as a picture framer in an arts and crafts store. Today is not the day to regale you with retail horror stories. Instead, July 13th’s story arose from a much more positive occurrence. Despite all the negatives of that job, it was good for my creative soul to be surrounded by raw materials. Items I would probably have never experimented with were serendipitously discovered on the shelves during my shifts.
Sometimes I was assigned to work in different areas of the store other than behind the framing counter or in the shop where we did the framing at the rear of the store. Close to the front were the jewelry supplies, where they were less likely to be shoplifted.
My favorite aisles were those with the strung beads. Except, of course, when I was required to “recover” them, after customers had made a jumbled mess out of the section, again. But even as I figured out where each strand of beautiful orbs and other shapes was supposed to hang, I felt a whisper of inspiration within.
“What could you do with these?”
Many of these beads were referred to as “semi-precious” gemstones, something I’d learned about as a teenager when my boyfriend and I would attend meetings of the Rock and Gem Society in Miami. We were even…
