So yesterday we were out, taking care of business, depositing checks, getting supplies to repair Murray's wheelchair, sneaking ten or twelve clearance fall plants into the cart at Lowes, the usual stuff. As I started to head home, I was instructed to turn right before the train tracks, "just for me." I had no idea what that man was trying to find, so I did as I was asked. It was no hardship, since a train stopped forward moving traffic at that moment anyway. There were a few industrial buildings, long on corrugated steel and short on architectural style. "Right here," he said. I turned. "And back this way." I pulled into a parking space and looked at a rather plain looking establishment. I couldn't tell whether it was a bar, a restaurant, or a liquor store, but its sign gave it away as someplace that sold adult beverages. "I just want to run in," he said. I seriously had no idea whether I was supposed to turn off the car and come in, or wait for him to grab a six pack of microbrew. As it turned out, I was glad that I followed him inside the local brewery that it was. I no longer drink beer, but I had a lovely hard cider while we chatted with a stained glass artist who was tucked into one corner of the bar. She had been commissioned to make a mosaic piece for the brewery-bar, a funky version of their logo. The bar was called 300 Suns, and she was making a red, yellow, and white glass mosaic on a reclaimed window, that will eventually hang on the larger window between the brewery side and the bar. But she wasn't simply working on her commission on site. She was inviting the patrons of the bar to participate in its creation. She has a vision of creating these mosaics in several businesses around town, and leaving them open and available for anyone to work on. It's a very intentional work of public art. Did Mr S-P and I participate? Of course we did. We worked on it for so long, my non-glass-gluing hand was sore from leaning on it while we tacked down hundreds of mosaic tiles. The layout was drawn in paper below the window, and the bulk of the sun design was in place. The white surround was starting to go down around it, and that's what she assumed we would do. But she made a point of saying several times that she wanted this to truly be public art, and anything unusual would only prove that it belonged to all of us. This inspired Mr S-P to place random pieces of red and yellow in the white field. I mostly worked on the white, in between two rays of the sun and around the dots of color that he left, mostly so no one would or even could come up and pry them off without serious effort. I can't wait to see the finished, grouted piece. I can imagine sitting over many ciders in the future, looking at it, and saying, "I was part of that. We both were."
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