Piecing a Grad Gift Together

When Glory graduated high school in 2020, we'd had some money set aside for her as a grad gift, and asked her what she might like it applied to. One of Audrey's suggestions was to get her best friend's mum, a gifted mosaic artist, to put together a small piece for her. Last fall, Glory approached Karen with her ideas, and she was happy to accept the commission. Last week, Glory got the call that it was finished and dropped by Karen's home studio to pick it up.

She is thrilled with it; looking at the finished piece, it is very easy to see why.

I am not sure how long Karen has been selling her art and exhibiting it in galleries, but she was well-established when Glory and Brooklyn first became friends early in elementary school. Her website shows a sampling of the wide variety of pieces and jewelry she has assembled over the years, and it was great running into her at a booth at Folk Fest one year. Karen also worked on the immense mosaic mural of Edmonton you may have seen in the International Departures area of Edmonton International Airport.

Glory was a little hesitant about broaching the subject initially - the idea of exchanging money with your bestie's mum on a work-for-hire-style project would be unsettling for most of us I imagine, and certainly was nothing I was considering before I turned 20!

But Karen is a lovely person and when Glory approached her with her budget, favourite colours and a flexible timeline, she was only too happy to put this piece together for her.

It presents an intriguing landscape of textures and colours that invites my eye to journey through it every time I see it, making new discoveries and associations each time. When I consider the amount of effort on display simply to select and curate all the elements, let alone bring them together in such a fashion, I am completely astounded.

My favourite part is probably the nautiloid fossil that seems to bloom from a stalk of black stones, flanked by white and green minerals - or is it perhaps dispensing them from the ancient shell's petrified aperture? But I also love the cross-sections of cable that I am very probably surrounded by but never get to see the insides of. The pink stones accommodate Glory's request for one of her favourite colours, and I love the shade of green in the bits of slate or shale that seem to lay the foundation for the left side. 

Given Glory's love of all things marine, the driftwood pieces are a wonderful touch and complement the nautiloid as well as the smaller shell I only noticed tonight when looking at a larger picture.

Tragically, I have not had the patience to appreciate abstract forms of art such as this, but the older I get, the easier it seems to become. The key is understanding that even a piece with no inherent subject or narrative should still make you feel something - and it may take time to understand what it is you are feeling. And it is probably not the same for everyone, but hopefully there are overlapping areas of perception or experience.

In the case of this nameless piece (Karen names some of her pieces, but not this one), there is an unmistakable organic quality that suggests growth, and unlimited potential. Maybe it is the petal-like stones surrounding the fossil and stem-like structures below that so strongly suggest a flower. Maybe it is the elegant Fibonacci sequence reflected in the geometry of the central shell, or the previously hidden treasures shining inside the dull cable housings.

For a person entering adulthood, this silent conglomeration of mineral and organic elements, natural and human-made components, speaks volumes to me about how our past informs our future but how so much remains to be unfolded before us and by us.

But more than that, I see something wrought not only with craftsmanship and artistry, but also with love. I am so happy that Glory chose something for her graduation gift that is at once tremendously long-lasting and timeless but which also encapsulates her at such a key moment in her life without using any words. Thank you Karen!