Grace Tripp
Chanhassen, MN

Three Wishes

Design:

When I saw the items I immediately began to do some free association with the word 'camel'. I figured I could make the filigree and the jewel work just about anywhere but the camel was going to be hard to use. I "googled" the word camel for images and ideas and came up with a whole lot of desert scenes - but nothing that said "MAKE ME!" So I did what I usually do when I need a creative energy fill up . . . I took a nap! When I woke I had a few ideas: There is a story in the bible about a camel: There is saying about the camel being the 'ship of the desert' . . . and finally I kept thinking of this goofy camel costume in a children's theater production of Aladdin and His Magical Lamp that I was in when I was a child. That led to the final idea of the genie in the lamp. As I began to think more about the design I decided to make my genie a woman. The male genie was intimidating and fierce, not exactly the feeling I wanted. My vision was an ethereal, mystical genie. The design took approximately 16 hours using Glass Eye software.

Theme Items:

In the first few drafts the camel was the clasp on her scarf and the jewel was in her headdress, however when the items came in the mail I had to revise the design because the scale was all off and she would have been huge! So the camel became background, the jewel became part of her scarf (the clasp at her neck) and the filigree became palm fronds and bushes at the base of the tree.

Construction:

In a perfect world I would have found some machine rolled, easy to cut and not too expensive glass to make this with . . . however, the ONLY piece that worked for the desert was a one-of- a-kind cut of Uroboros. The scarf is Kokomo, the sky Spectrum and the rest of the colors are ones I had around, glue chip (lamp), waterglass (dress) and cathedral (skin) The palm tree is copper sheet cut to shape and tinned. She looks very different when back lit and since I plan to hang her on the wall, I designed and built the frame as a box. It is 3 inches deep and I plan to put lighting behind it. The panel and frame are 32"x 40". Photographing the final product was a big challenge! Since I am rarely home when the sun is still out, I hung a white sheet, got every lamp I could and experimented with the best angles and lighting. The panel took probably 30 hours and the frame construction another 10 hours. And trying to get the best pictures - 4 frustrating hours.