In less than two weeks, I fly off with others from around the United States to meet up in Guatemala City to teach art for a week at Oasis, a safe haven for girls who have been forced into child labor or experienced physical and/or sexual abuse. (Click here to watch a short video about Oasis). We’ve had months to fundraise and prepare for the logistics of the trip, and the Athentikos team has been incredibly helpful. I’ve taught art, mainly jewelry making, in many developing countries so when I was asked how my curriculum plan was developing it occurred to me I actually didn’t have any idea how I would teach in the format they requested.

I’ll be sharing more later about what we’re being asked to do, but the short version is I didn’t have a plan. Not at all. Until yesterday.

Why yesterday?  I’m so glad to tell you!  My great friend and amazing glass artist from Olympia, WA, Kim Merriman(check out her art here) was helping to brainstorm ideas.  I knew I wanted to build the week around shards of porcelain or glass but I hadn’t worked out what each day of training would look like and what other materials we would need. And, how in the world would I keep what I wanted to do safe for girls 9 to 16 years old at Oasis?

I had some ideas of colors and shapes but no way to pull it together had yet emerged. I’ll be spending many hours, multiple days leading the workshops so I really wanted to put a lot of thought into the art we’ll make and the discussions we’ll have around them. One of my ideas resulted in a drop of hot solder on my knee leaving a burn mark through my pants! So, I focused more on fundraising and practicing Spanish phrases as the curriculum deadline quickly approached. Waiting for inspiration to arrive.

And then the proposal came. Kim offered to fuse small pieces of glass, enough for everyone at the I Am Art camp, to keep the edges from being sharp and giving more durability to glass. This discussion happened right after I helped Kim deliver her newest glass pieces to the buyer at the International Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA, think Dale Chihuly!) gift shop. What an amazing thing it would be to share gifts of her expertise with these girls in Guatemala.

Yesterday, I spent the day with Kim learning how to score and cut the glass into various shapes and to decorate them with different color mixtures of frit (mixture of silica and fluxes).

All day and two kiln firings worth!  Luckily another artist friend, Michelle Merritt, helped too or we would probably still be there working away. Frit looks like rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, to me anyway.

These girls surely deserve to experience working with these beautiful colors and to know people around the world cared so much to spend time to prepare materials for them to use in their art projects.

What can be better than that?  I’ll tell you. Those beautiful pieces of glass, the color combinations, and the textures all gave me the inspiration I needed to formulate my entire plan for the week with the girls.  Check out more of our photos here.

After just a short time working with the glass, I had each day envisioned in my mind from what projects we’ll do to what materials I still need to pull it all together. I had a plan for each day to build on the others fitting into the template format I’ve been asked to use. It will involve painting their stories in those same glorious color palettes and later using those paintings to create paper beads.

They’ll learn wire wrapping to create beautiful pendants or wishing windows to marry the beautiful fused glass with their beads, their stories.

I know Scott and Amelia will be relieved I finally have a plan! I know I am. Now back to finish my fundraising for the trip and learn a little more Spanish.

To learn more about the trip and to make a donation online click here and click here to see video I made for the trip. I’m excited these otherwise unusable small cast off pieces of glass from Thurston County will make their way to Guatemala and grateful to everyone who has donated money, their time and ideas to help make this art camp a great success for these girls!