As winter darkness sets in and my daughter asks every day at 4:30 “why am I staying up so late tonight?” Temple Shalom held a festival called Shine the Light to celebrate light and their stained glass windows. Connection Lab was there to lead a collaborative mosaic project and to give an hour-long demonstration of leaded glass.
The Mosaic project was a great success. Young people who have been designing parts of the mosaic in an elective class stopped by the mosaic table to add pieces to their designs and people of all ages helped to place and glue tiles onto the central element of the design, an oil lamp with colorful rings. At each of the events leading up to the festival participants created small circles with words or images that answer the question “What is your light? what makes you shine?”. Their circles were mounted on glass discs and we incorporated them into the oil lamp decoration.
More than 70 people contributed to the mosaic on the day of the festival and 26 are part of the elective that worked on it during class time. It’s been a great project and we’re all excited to see it installed.
Our stained glass demonstration drew a big crowd too.
On Sunday the class grouted the whole piece (and much of the carpet in the room we were using). Now it’s time to have the mosaic installed and see how it looks in place!
