Kristalleben My life's journey told in a hoard of glass. Beauty found in upcycling and litter. Trash turned into art.

I've been hoarding the glass and supplies used in the piece since the 1970's. I had boxes of glass I've been collecting for decades that I decided I had to use or get rid of. Almost each piece holds a special memory. Of course, the finished sculpture recalls Kristallnacht and some references to that event are quite literal within the piece, but it also contains bits of the journey of my whole life going back to childhood in first Indiana and then Colorado. It contains: shards of my grandmother's good crystal; a gold pocket watch from my other grandmother; souvenirs in glass from travels to Europe and Australia; pieces from places I lived; many things collected from friends and important loves; debris from the 2013 devastating Boulder flood; a liquor bottle from the marriage of Charles Dinarello and Edward Kinney, keys for old jobs, vehicles, and homes; cannibalized elements of my "Denial" Holocaust collage; and my own blood drawn from working with such sharp hazardous material. From the "Denial" collage, a piece of broken mirror asks, "How could you look the other way when your Jewish neighbors disappeared?" Another simply says Shoah written in Hebrew. Keys represent the homes and businesses snatched from the Jews. I've collected over a thousand bags of litter on my daily bike rides up Lefthand Canyon over the years and some of the glass is sourced from there as well. It is nearly impossible for photographs to capture the complexity or beauty of the carefully composed and balanced curtain of glass. At first glance, the glass seem chaotic and randomly placed, but there is careful symmetry throughout to give the piece structure and visual harmony, color and density are thoughtfully balanced and all the clusters of shapes resolve simply into the rectangular edges. This is my third major work that references the Holocaust.