Pick a Color . . . Any Color!

It is no secret that blues and greens are my go to colors. They are the colors I am most comfortable with. Perhaps it is because these are the most abundant colors in nature. But, there really isn’t a color that I do not like. In fact, looking back, I have had a long love affair with color.

It will come as no surprise that I was the child with the biggest Crayola crayon box. Remember the one with the sharpener in the back? How I remember all of those beautiful colors. In my early teen years my mother let me pick out the new wall to wall carpet for my room. I can still remember how I was drawn to it immediately. It was variegated shades of creamy whites flecked with a lovely orange color. Yes, it was the 70’s. I moved into my first apartment in New York when I was 19. I couldn’t wait to paint the walls. I wallpapered one wall of the kitchen in a lovely floral print with pinks and greens on a white background. I picked a bright green to paint the other three walls. My boyfriend at the time, now my husband, thought I was crazy. But I loved it! In fact at this moment my living room walls are a lovely shade of green that reminds me of that kitchen. It is a color that makes me smile.

I did have one color disaster. When we were first married, and living in that same New York City apartment. I picked a bright cheery lemon yellow for the bedroom. It was a dark room with little natural light. I reasoned that it would brighten the room. My husband painted two walls when I came into the room and said, “Stop!” It was actually a very disquieting color. And yes, we ended up painting it blue.

I overheard a conversation the other day where someone said they were painting all of the rooms in their house the same neutral color. I started counting the number of different colors I have in my own house. Definitely more than I can count on one hand and more than I am willing to admit to here. But seriously, with a four bedroom house that’s 4 colors already! I am sure I am breaking all manner of design rules. But I couldn’t possibly pick just one or two colors when there are so many wonderful colors to choose from.

This brings me to my most recent glass pieces. I wanted to try a new technique that takes thin strings of glass (appropriately called glass stringer) and fuses them together to create a sheet of glass that can then be cut up and manipulated to make various patterns. The patterns can get quite complex and these pieces are often referred to as tapestry glass. For my first attempt I decided not to spend a lot of time on planning out the colors and patterns. Instead I chose to go completely random. I took a tube of glass stringers in mixed colors and just let them roll into place. I moved one or two where there were too many of the same color together but otherwise totally random. I love the way these truly one of a kind pieces turned out. This is a technique I will definitely explore further. Here are a few pictures of the process.

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