Shadow and light

A combination of sand, soda, and limestone under fire becomes molten liquid that eventually hardens into something magical: glass. An invention that’s 4,000 years old that feels both ancient and futuristic at the same time, glass is everywhere, sometimes just a knock away from teetering precariously on a shelf, and other times as resilient as the brick and metal that frame it against century-old buildings. There are opaque ones where the color and density you see inside of it is the point, and transparent ones that simply direct your vision through to the other side.

There are even opalescent ones, like this Tiffany stained glass I got to see up close in Winter Park, Florida, at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. These glasses ask you to look within AND through. Depending on where you’re standing, and how the light is hitting, you will see different colors and depths and shades in each corner. The entire piece together is marvelous and enchanting, but it was the individual pieces and their milky sparkles that drew my eyes in. The darkness of the room in which these glasses were housed was an essential contrast to seeing their essence. When I stepped out into that sunny Florida morning, my vision was washed out for a moment, forgetting everything but the shadow and light that continued to dance deep within my cornea.