this design.net - the intersection of design, life and spirit

Check out GASCF.etsy.com for our new warm glass bowls.

We started collecting bottles from community gatherings. We made lanterns, tea light coverings, bowls, platters, ladle & napkin holders, & soap dishes. 

This glass piece may have started out as a container for wine, vinegar, or water, & may have 78 hours of care and work in creating it. I hope you enjoy the recycled product as much as we did in selecting and making it.

This form makes a great rest for your ladle while you’re cooking- keep it near your stove as an interesting, green, fun and functional art object. We also like to use it as a soap dish. 

    After living in the Seattle area for five years, my husband and I decided we wanted to move back to the South. We were married here, and I grew up here. I always thought it would a great place to raise our two daughters. While in Seattle, I discovered that being from the South composed more of my identity than I realized. It wasn’t until then that I started understanding and developing my point of view artistically. 

    The move motivated me to start this journal. The point of this journal is not to overindulge on deeply personal and selfish small talk. I really want to discuss our connection to our place of Being. The spirit that lies in the landscape, the people, and culture. This spirit defines our perception of beauty and understanding of Truth. 

    The artifacts and objects that stimulate reflection are the most sacred in our lives. While it may seem sacrilegious to identify an object as sacred, the point of its existence in relation to our lives is dire to our posterity. 

   The building in this photograph lays about two feet off the shoulder of county road 47 in Lauderdale County, Alabama. The landscape has totally reclaimed it. When I first saw this building I, of course, thought of what it used to be. But more enlightening than that was what it is now. It is as though an ancient civilization lay beneath the layers of kudzu and overgrowth on the side of the highway. And there it stays hidden, half discovered and half forgotten. 

    We see buildings and houses like this everywhere in the South. They are corpses of the livelihood they once sustained. It is beautiful and ghostly to see them become part of the landscape. These beautiful skeletons aren’t memorialized, but almost something holier, they are kin to the land. 

   This pond lays in the middle of a field. The dock is twisted and obviously not usable. I appreciate that it remains. The owner of this property must know its beauty.

    In this journal portion of the blog, I will be talking about all the things that inspire me. Beauty is something that is discovered, and it should be shared.