When I looked back at when I last wrote a blog, I was shocked to see if was in the early Spring! Clearly, I was completely immersed in preparing for the July 6th Garden Tour. The local tour, put on by the Generous Gardeners is not your average Garden Tour. It aims high in both purpose and results. The funds raised from this tour (tickets and sponsorships) plus special events put on several times a year (Dahlia sales, plant sales, etc.) are to raise money to beautify many of the public spaces in Gloucester from the traffic “islands” to the grand swath of land along Stacy Boulevard home to our precious fisherman and fisherman’s wives statues. The group has nearly 100 volunteers that actually do all the work.
When I was asked a year ago to be on the 2024 tour, I knew the gardening preparation would dominate my Spring. I also knew I had to so some special things to combine the art of gardening with my sea glass art. The result was a series of sea glass steppingstones that I plan to sell at the event and in my studio. Beyond this, I also used this new “direction” to create a piece for the Cape Ann Museum’s Cape Ann Blossoms show. Working with fellow Cape Ann Artisan, Deb Gonet, we made a non-organic sculptural piece for the show inspired by Fitz Henry Lane’s painting “Rough Seas.” If I hadn’t followed the steppingstone path, I would have never been able to do this. Fast forward, the piece was entered into the Marblehead Arts Festival and accepted by the jury into the sculpture exhibit. It is now in its 3rd home as part of the Wenham Museum’s “Art Grows Here” exhibit in a raised bed in front of the museum and it’s for sale with a percentage going to the Museum if it sells. Who knows where it will next land!
Getting back to the Garden Tour, after all the hard work, the experience itself was simply gratifying and joyful. The group is totally professional and well organized with excellent communications. The week before the official tour, I had a chance to view the gardens of the other people on the tour – many are neighbors. I was SO impressed with all the work everyone had put in and the wonderful surprises in their gardens. And it has to be noted that many adjacent neighbors who were not officially on the tour upgraded their gardens too. As we had shared many stories while preparing and afterward, the experience brought us all closer together. At the “after-party” to thank the volunteers, many of us continued sharing our stories. Among the favorites was the incredibly successful lemonade stand run by the grandchildren of one of the neighbors on the tour. If you missed the tour, there’s a wonderful video created by the North Shore Horticultural Society.
My studio was open during the tour. I had steppingstones downstairs with two lovely friends who volunteered and sent people upstairs where I shared my work and space. I so enjoyed meeting new people from all over and also seeing community friends who had never been to my studio. I can’t wait to see some of these faces back again when they have more time. I was truly grateful to those who left with a piece from my collection, and I donated 20% of my sales to the Generous Gardeners.
I cannot express enough how honored I was to be part of all of these community events and programs. The Cape Ann Museum’s Cape Ann Blossoms is so elegant and thoughtful. The Generous Gardeners Tour is intimate and engaging – opening up visits to neighborhoods in Gloucester that no one even knows about. The volunteers in Marblehead were incredibly welcoming. The Wenham Museum is a delightful and very important cultural asset on the North Shore and so inventive in all it does. What I’ve experienced is that community drives art and art drives community. The two are inseparable and equally important. On Cape Ann and the north shore, we have both in abundance!
