The Sunday Creative: Solace

Gravesite, Old Pine Street Church, Philadelphia, July 2010

This week's Sunday Creative prompt is "solace," and as always it is inspiring many different interpretations among those of us participating. For me it evoked the relatively recent memories of being at my mom's bedside as she passed away last summer, then staying there in Philadelphia for two weeks to help my dad sort through things before he moved out here to live with me and the kids. I took this photo of an 18th-century gravesite with lilies during one of my many therapeutic, soul-settling walks around my old hometown during those two weeks. I have been using this image today as inspiration for a jewelry set that uses labradorite, oxidized sterling silver, peridot, and cat's eye glass that exactly matches the lily in this photo. I like using my photos as inspiration for jewelry; that's not my explicit intention when I take them, but it seems logical that whatever captures my eye through the lens is more likely to capture the eye when interpreted into another creative form. One thing that did occur to me when naming the photo is that naming jewelry is a rather different process: a piece entitled "gravesite" likely won't spur curiosity or a purchase, so I'm thinking "Remembrance" or something a bit less somber than "gravesite"....