Snow Globe Series
Snow Globes and Imagination
Snow globes are very enchanting and magical. They're made of a transparent sphere, filled with sparkles that glitter in the water when you shake it. Inside the sphere there is always some wonderland scene or a town, or landscape or figure.
Whenever I shake my snow globes, I'm instantly taken to a secure protected place where I know no harm can come to me. I am protected. I love this dreamy, protected feeling. It is the feeling that I have when I find a sacred place and can sit quietly and become one with all things natural and all things "yes."
Snow globes allow us to imagine. If we don’t have imagination and if imagination fails to create the wonder of life and possibility, then doubt triumphs. If we allow doubt and discouragement to capture our spirits and souls rather than beauty and meaning, we are indeed a sad society, culture. Yes, there are often exceptional challenges in our life, emergencies and times of crisis that are difficult and need to be negotiated. However, struggles are good and we should always be able to learn from them. We should grow from them, and not believe that life is just utopian and wonderful all the time. Imagination helps here. So in reality, snow globes can also represent for constraints of reality and life as we really know it. I have always been fascinated by the magic of a snow globe, and their enchantment and their magical enclosed pristine environments But, I also know that the environments within the snow globe aren’t real. So, how do we deal with this struggle and challenge in reality?
In the arts, I have found that the simple fact of repetition, the act of repeating things over and over again isn’t good for me. It isn’t good for my imagination nor my outlook on life and on others. Repetition honestly is boring, But, the newness and freshness of creating is anything but. If my snow globes didn’t have movement and allow for imagination, then they too would be boring.
It is only with imagination that a more profound perspective can be achieved. Yes, imagination is the door to make believe, of escape and distraction. It's also far more than that because it isn’t limited. Imagination is always where freedom and free space exists. Imagination requires to believe or have faith that something we cannot see actually exists. My work begins with abstractions of pools of color, and these pools of color allow me to always, always imagine, create and explore. Every invention, every discovery , every exploration and advancement of human knowledge and the concepts and ideas that flow from knowledge and imagination are an advancement of how things can be known and eventually, perhaps, seen. Where imagination fails, doubt triumphs. Whenever doubt occurs in my life, I always know that my imagination has failed and that I need to call upon it to think of possibilities. To find my way through struggles in life, I imagine.
Snow globes allow for imagination and the freedom that accompanies that shake of the sphere and that reverie that follows when watching the shiny particles float through the liquid and again land on the ground. Snow globes are always a protected secure place, a scared place that allows imagination to flourish and perspectives to change.
