I went out to my glass studio in my barn this afternoon to get some bubble wrap. I needed it to wrap a package I was sending to a new client.

I was immediately enchanted with all of the glass. I love the vibrance of the colors, the texture and feel of the glass, the palpable sense of possibility.

I realized how much I miss working with the glass. During the winter, I generally don’t do glass work because the light is different in the studio. Just a seasonal thing, but somehow it makes a big difference in my experience.

I picked up a box of what I called “Daily Roughs.”

When I was first starting to work with glass, I found it difficult to get started when I got out to the studio.

As a way of jumping right in, I would go to the glass scrap heap, which is a box of scrap glass from prior projects. I’d pick a clear piece for a base and then select small colored scrap pieces and quickly make a design with them. Very quickly, no designing ahead of time, and I just slapped the glue on there without regard to aesthetics. I had a goal of completing a piece in 5 minutes.

My ‘rules’ were that I couldn’t alter the shape of a piece, couldn’t do any cutting. I had to work with only what was in the scrap heap, and I had to ‘feel my way,’ intuitively, as to placement.

My idea was that the glass would ‘tell me’ what pieces went on the base and in what arrangement, which is exactly what happened.

Here is the first Daily Rough that I ever made:

I was amazed how much fun it was, and how easy it was. It was never about the result. Because I was using only ‘junk,’ it was purely about the process of getting warmed up. It was really about my relationship to the glass.

This gave me a remarkable feeling of freedom. And I was always delighted with the result, even though it was never about the result. This really surprised me too.

I got to thinking that maybe my life could be that way.

Maybe I could feel my way through my life, always knowing what piece to put where, metaphorically.

Clearly, part of the key to this is not taking myself too seriously. That’s what the glass taught me that first day.

For about a month, I did a Daily Rough every day, and I was always completely engaged in the process and delighted with the result.

Here is another Daily Rough. It reminds me of Tibetan prayer flags. Of course, I didn’t plan it that way. I saw it after I glued the glass onto the base.

Filed under: Being a Reinventer, Adventures of a Reinventer, Lynne's Reinvention Journey on January 10th, 2009