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Looking for an R for the A to Z challenge, I discovered rutilant: glowing or glittering with red or golden light. This stained glass piece by Stratoz captures both red and golden. I love finding a new word that has relevance to the art around me.
Orange light may help us wake up like a cup of coffee. A 2014 study by Gilles Vandewalle has the poetic conclusion that, ” A burst of orange light wakes up our ‘circadian eye.'” Orange is awesome.
When I met Stratoz, he said his favorite color was gray. He still digs it. He’s also doing an A to Z challenge, doodling his way through the alphabet with jazz on the stereo. Since it’s Orange Tuesday, I also include this photo of a gray pendant I created with a dash of orange.
The folks at Painted Paisley were sharing some of their beautiful suits for Diwali, and I wanted to know more about this celebration. As I discovered, Diwali is a festival of lights celebrated in India and in other countries by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. Diwali is the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance.
Rangoli are part of the celebration, and the Sanskrit word means a creative expression in art using color. Women often create them on the floor, or at the doorway to welcome guests and the Goddess Lakshmi. Rangoli remind me of mandalas, and the vibrant color resonates with what inspires me in art.
Diyas, clay oil lamps, are lit as an expression of this triumph of light over darkness at Diwali.
The lamps made me think of Stratoz’s stained glass night light.
The color orange is woven throughout Diwali, from glowing orange lights, to rangoli composed of marigolds, to Diwali sweets like carrot halwa and jalebi, to deep orange sarees.
Stratoz and I are going to be interviewed for the Northampton Magazine, about alumni accomplishments. One of the questions we were asked to consider was how Northampton Community College(NCC) prepared us to run a business. At first, I didn’t know how to answer this question because I never would’ve have imagined having my own business when I was at the college.
Then I remembered, when I was 19, I petitioned to take a newly created class at NCC called Responding to the Bereaved, which was restricted to Funeral Service Education students. NCC decided to let me in, and there I sat with 10 men and one woman studying to become Funeral Directors, learning about the psychology of loss and bereavement. I took the class because I felt compelled to, in wanting to understand my own pain, but class was a response to the needs of the Funeral students, who wanted more understanding of their clients, who were in the midst of grief.
Some of the members of the class grappled with the material, arguing that they weren’t counselors, and did they need to know all this psychology, but they were willing to consider the possibility. Their profession was important to them, their role of guide at a moment of disruption. I felt out of place as the only outsider, significantly younger than most of the students and the only other woman, but I was struck by the importance of the relationship between the person serving and those being served, and by the stories of the student’s own losses that arose in class discussions. I most likely told Stratoz, when I met him that same year, that I wanted to be a bereavement counselor.
Now here I am, 25 years later, with our business Nutmeg Designs, and the relationship between artist and client is what guides both Stratoz and myself in our work. We respond to grief at times, when someone commissions art as a remembrance, a gesture of love and healing. Stratoz created a butterfly mandala in stained glass, commissioned by the friend of a couple that lost a child to cancer. There is sadness in such a request, and yet such care. This couple in turn commissioned a butterfly piece for another couple who lost triplets, carrying the hope for healing from their hearts to others.
How we met(Stratoz’s version): Meeting Mosaic Woman
When I started working the Nutmeg Designs website, I knew we needed photos of Stratoz and me in our studios, to show where we work, our natural habitat. Fortuitously, I met Allison Puketza of 4A Photography, and she was intrigued by the idea of capturing people in context. She came over with lights, and spent time getting our studios composed, with an artist’s eye as to what makes a good focal point and color. She advised I wear one of my orange pendants, and I love that! Allison also noticed that Stratoz had the drawing he’d made for a Hope mosaic on his table and I had the mosaic in progress on my table, and she loved how that symbolized our collaborative work.
Allison got her first SLR camera when she was in the 6th grade, and was surrounded by a creative family, with biweekly slide shows, and “paint-offs” for entertainment. She started making scrapbooks as a journal for each year, and was an art major in college before the expense became too much. Eventually she went back, and finished a degree in sociology, but the idea of going to school for photography was a dream that stayed with her, and Allison began an online master’s program through the Academy of Art University Photography School of San Francisco. After 6 years of part time study, Allison graduated in 2011. Her business, 4A Photography, located in the Souderton, PA area, is named for herself and her family Alec, Abigail and Anja. Allison designed her own logo, and I love it, especially being my last name starts with A!
Both her daughters are now in school and she is branching out with her photography, doing family portraits, workplace portraits, and still maintaining her love of abstraction which she discovered while in photography school. Allison asked if Stratoz would create a stained glass piece inspired by some of her abstract photos. This is the kind of inspiration that we love, and Stratoz made a very cool suncatcher with interpretations of 4 photos from her Impressions of Space series.
Like a certain singer from New Jersey, Wayne Stratz spent month-long vacations in the stratozphere growing up, and decided to name his blog Stratoz: A Life Unfolding in 2007. I refer to Wayne as Stratoz when I write about him on my blog, and perhaps some readers do not know that he is my husband and partner in craft. We are Nutmeg Designs.
Wayne writes about Ignatian spirituality, gardening, teaching, mystics, glass craft, science and jazz, sometimes separately, sometimes several at once. If you want a glimpse of a life unfolding, check out Stratoz.
Some of my favorite posts by Stratoz:
And for some awesome plant photos, check out the garden section.
