Cut Glass Decanter, Hernando, Florida, 2020
"What artists say about their own work is compelling because it tells us something about what they believe they are doing. Their words speak to an orientation or an idea, but those orientations and ideas are never complete. Artists (of all kinds) are only partly aware of what they do. Much of what happens in making art is unconscious." From A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind by Siri Hustvedt (p4). When I picked this flower from the garden where the weight of water and beauty had left it to die, I was not thinking I would place it, broken and alone, along with a piece of my heritage, also broken though not yet ready to be alone. Neither I am ready to give up on, and so they become art, and interpretation of crystal cut and sharp with a flower soft and delicate, the water outside instead of in.
The crystal decanter once fell under its own weight and its neck shattered into minuscule shards which caught the sun just as these raindrops. Its shape is unique, as is its pattern, and I have no way of identifying how old it is, and thus from what family member I have inherited it. If I have to guess, I'd say it came from the childhood home of my grandmother, Georgia Edna Grund, thus originating from either her parents (William T. Grund, d. 1952) or her mother's parents (George R. Jansen, d. 1917) home, either of whom were successful enough to have found need for a cut crystal decanter and sixteen companion aperitif glasses with which to entertain guests.