Sigh.
‘Where do I start?’, I ask myself as a vision floods my awareness. The only way I can express what the experience feels like is to say it feels like the past 19 years of my Life have just collapsed into this moment. Ah! Time collapsing, so that’s what it feels like.
I guess to understand you’d have to know the tale…
I began seeing light pictures, scenes, in my head.
And they wouldn’t go away. I did my best to ignore them. But they preyed upon me. One time I even remember saying to the Universe in general if what I was experiencing was a result of ‘Gabriel’ blowing his horn in my ear, go tell ‘Gabriel’ I said to shove it. I’m not falling for this. Not again. Uh huh. Not me, not this time.
I had been lured before.
I was 9 when Mom and Dad finally gave me piano lessons for a year, for my birthday. I had desired them for 2 years at that point. They had waited, seeing if my desire had been true or, simply curiosity, which would soon pass.
After 6 months I was playing classical masterpieces. Unknown to me at the time, my piano teacher, in collaboration with my parents, arranged for me to be ‘interviewed’ by the Dean of Music at a private University. It was after I played for him that he became my teacher, instead of the young mother with the laughing eyes.
I never knew how and why my piano playing changed from something I did, because I was simply in bliss while doing it, into something I did to please others. It changed from self expression to ’no, you didn’t play that, as it is written’.
After 2 years of it, I Quit.
And it would be 40 years before I ever sat down at a piano and even thought about playing. My piano came as a birthday present this year. Now if I can figure out all the buttons. The keys, I still remember.
After the disaster with the piano in my opinion, at age 11, I began ballet. And danced my first recital on toes shoes. I quit that, too. I didn’t like what went with the attention of being noticed as ‘not normal‘.
I had successfully avoided forms of creative self expression for many years. Oh, I made things, crafts. But mostly I kept my head stuck in some book, avoiding that side of my brain as much as possible. It was just my luck, that as an engineer, I was one of the ones called upon to design new construction standards for unusual circumstances. So I guess it still crept out.
Peace and quiet had reigned supreme from this part of me for many years. I had successfully managed to skulk around acting, looking and, doing, just like everyone else. The epitome of ‘normal and well adjusted’.
Until the pictures in my head.
Thoroughly pissed at this point, I grudgingly sat down and began to draw them. Art and drawing, being another something I had never been around, nor studied before. This is how it went.
I would draw a line. Then erase it. Draw it again. Then erase it. Draw it again. When what I had drawn was ’right’, I felt it. And wouldn’t erase it this time. This is the way it went, one line at a time.
The drawing weren’t like sketches. They were like topical survey maps. They were carving diagrams. I was taking one step at a time. Drawing the diagram was step #1. Figuring out HOW to carve was the next. For these pictures were pictures in Light and the only way I could re-create them, to share what I saw in a form others could enjoy, too, would be in a medium that refracts it. Glass and crystal.
I set myself to the task of research. I researched glass. I researched crystal. I researched all the various techniques through the ages. Then set about playing with all I had found out, like some mad scientist. Experts in the business, kept telling me ’Lady, what you want to do, can’t be done. You’re crazy.’
There goes that ’crazy’ label again. But by this time, I had successfully created an identity as an engineer, so my ’craziness’ was accepted and most often not questioned.
I took my very first practice piece to the man who told me it couldn’t be done and gave it to him with a smile.
How do I do it?
VERY CAREFULLY.
Rofl.
I draw a drawing, a carving diagram. Then I transfer this drawing to a thick masking on the slab. Then I cut the mask. Then proceed to remove each piece in a specific order and sand blast it to the depth I desire. What I do during this process is what makes these pieces different. Each successive stage of the blast is just as deep as any other.
After the deep carving is done, I clean the piece of the masking and set it down across my kitchen sink. Glass and crystal has to be water cooled while carving. I turn on the water and proceed to carve all the details using diamond bits and an electric drill. It has to be done by touch, since it’s impossible to see anything on the slab while the water is running. Put a diamond is a glass of water and you’ll see what I mean.
After all that, it’s done and I get to see it for the first time.
I forgot to mention that while masked, I can’t see what it all looks like. I only see one piece at a time and that’s in reverse. Since I carve from the back, I work in reverse of what is to be carved. I have to carve the pieces backwards and reversed at the same time.
How long did it take? That depends on which piece. One of them took around 650 hours from start to finish. After the 3rd one I did took me 3 days to carve, I decided not to do all the carving from start to finish, without stopping to rest.
It takes focus. Inner focus. LOTS of it. I have to be at a place of Stillness and Peace to totally concentrate on what I‘m creating.
Crystal and glass aren’t things to work on when you’re mad or under stress. They aren’t very forgiving of mistakes that shatter them.
Remember that the torment of the pictures always in my head, would only end when a piece was finished, so I had ample motivation. When each was done, I would quite arbitrarily say to the Universe, ‘Now go away and leave me alone. I did it, already.’ But another would come. I could just sense them, lined up like planes waiting to come in for a landing. So I trudged along and plodded ahead. One right after another.
The last piece I made, after it was finished,
I shattered it with a sledge hammer.
Maybe some could understand my frustration. I was now broke, having spent everything I’d ever accumulated and then some, investing in these pieces. The equipment is expensive. So are the inlays of silver and gold on some pieces. And diamond bits are costly when using dozens of dozens at a time. Then there’s the special order Starfire, a custom glass with added lead for the clarity of crystal but, it‘s not as hard to cut.
Not one piece has ever been sold.
One was Gifted. Another traded for services rendered in connection with one of my children.
I’ve been holding them, waiting. I understood art. We’re all attracted to what’s within us. If it’s within the artist, too, then we are attracted to their work.
This is what is within me.
Sincerely,
Sue Ann Edwards
The Gallery
Sea Siren
1990
19″ Diameter x 1/2″ thick Sapphire Blue Glass, 3/4″ bevel. Hand Cut.
Being a circle, the piece can be displayed in two ways. One way, the siren is directing the wave, riding it. The other, she is about to be swmaped by it.
So it is with our emotions. They can rule us or we can govern them. Like ancient mariners, we are all subject to their lures.
Carousel ‘Corn
1990
Proposal
1990
Quintessence
1/2″ x 22 1/2″ x 32″ with 1″ bevel. 99.9% Silver Inlay. Hand cut.
One
1/2″ x 24″ x 32″ with a 1″ bevel. Hand cut.
Threshold
1/2″ x 24″ x 32″ with a 1″ bevel. Hand cut.
Redemption
1/2″ x 24″ x 32″ with a 1″ bevel. Hand cut.
