It’s probably too hot to be outdoors, so there don’t seem to be a lot of events in Birmingham at the moment.  I’m staying in, too, and getting some stuff done.

Quite a while back, I found a stack of glass panes at a garage sale for free.  And anyone who knows me knows how much I like free stuff.  So I took them, thinking I’d eventually try and paint on them.

My first attempt failed miserably, thanks to a superball and a playful cat.  I’m much more happy with this attempt.

In preparation for using them, I went and took a bunch of pictures of trees, from under them, pointing straight up.  They’re interesting that way.

After I finished painting on one side of the glass, I was completely unsure how to hang it.  The last piece of glass I leaned up against something quickly fell prey to the aforementioned superball/cat combination.  The nice folks at Alabama Art Supply recommended I call the nice folks at Jingers Stained Glass.  Based on that conversation – and then another conversation with a blue-eyed girl at Michael’s – I glued some rings to the glass for hanging.  After waiting a little while for the glue to cure, I threaded that green ribbon through it.  (I might pick another color of ribbon, if I was going to hang it permanently, but the colors of ribbon I have handy around the house are significantly limited….)

I think it looks great in front of a window, too.  Especially if you lived somewhere more urban and less green.  But all my winderrs point out onto something green right now, so my house maybe doesn’t provide the best example.  The window pointing out onto my storage shed was the best I could do.  Maybe best in a small window, facing a brick wall, somewhere on Southside?  Or maybe a bleak dorm room or apartment on a campus somewhere?

The last two pictures provide an interesting contrast and are a good example of why painting on the glass may stay interesting for the future.  The first is taken with a flash; the second is without.  And I think the tree takes on a different character depending on the light.  So it changes with the status of the lights in the room.  Very cool.

I just hope those metal rings hold tight.  I already picked up shattered glass once.  The cat and the superball, remember?  Darn cat.

Okay, yeah, so someone contacted me and said the recently “finished” Computer-Age Impressionism painting looked like:

“…sunset at the beach…There is a rock out further in the water over the beachy hill. Closer there is a random rock formation..out of the picture there are mountains surrounding this beach which is not a public sort of place but something you just stumble upon and walk on. Not a beach where ppl are out tanning and building sandcastles. Not here because the mountains have it secluded.”

Yeah.  Thanks a lot…  So then I saw it like that too.  And it needed a hint of water.  And I’m an incorrigible tinkerer.  So I “fixed” it.  More work for me….  Why can’t I leave well enough alone?  But I don’t mind as long as it’s getting better.  If it’s still at my house, it’s hard to stop messing around with it.  What do we think now?  More interesting?  Less good?  Thanks for the feedback!

One of the hardest things with any piece of art is when to decide it’s finished – whatever that means.