Michael O'Brien
The theme for this art show was inspired by glass and copper wire sculptures that I did for Green Spring residents Joann Clodfelter and Debbie Beveridge. The work incorporates sea glass that Joann and her daughter, Debbie, found along the shore in the Chesapeake Bay area over the course of a year.
I’ve always enjoyed incorporating ‘found objects’ in the work I do with stained glass and copper wire. As I worked on the sculptures and, later on new paintings for this show, I started thinking in a broader context of the people and the ideas ‘found along the way’ in my life connected to my art.
Here is just one thought or recollection I’d like to share in that regard … My grandmother, Frances Hammerslough, was a seamstress who operated a dressmaking business out of her home in the Mojave Desert town of Needles, California. I have many childhood memories of her pulling out bolts of material and dress patterns for customers — what comes to mind are all the colors and designs and leftover scraps of cloth. With the scraps she’d make patchwork quilts. I still have a few handed down from my mom to me.
I can’t say there is a direct correlation to my grandmother’s quilts, but for the longest time now, I’ve enjoyed and been inspired by patchwork quilts as an art form. The titles on display here; “Peace Jubilee,” “Looking Back At You,” and “Seed,” are what I refer to as my ‘patchwork collages.’ I completed them this past summer.
Without getting into a detailed description of the process of making the collages, the point is that I was using a pair of my grandmother’s old scissors in cutting out the ‘patchwork’ collage pieces and while working I had a minor revelation about her.
It occurred to me that my grandmother — busily working away in her little sewing room, with all her colorful spools of thread, bright cloth and dress patterns — was my first artistic influence. If she was still around, she’d laugh at that and say her dressmaking was about making money to supplement the family income — not art.
Lastly, she wouldn’t be too happy about the condition of her scissors these days — they are covered with acrylic paint and gloss medium and I use them to cut everything from paper to copper wire — but she’s always there each time I pick them up.
(304) 359-2097 e-mail mkobrien3(at)yahoo.com
•