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Over in the nursing home, an old, old woman, with sparse, wispy white hair, sits tied in her wheel chair. Her eyes are unfocused and vacant, staring off into earlier times, other places. Her loose lips are slightly moving, in front of toothless pink gums, mumbling softly as the aides and nurses efficiently pass her by. And as she sits, she strokes the satin edge of her lap quilt, her fingers ceaselessly caressing its ragged edge.
Down the street, a little blond two year old, with pink petal cheeks, snuggles up to her mother, sleepily looking at the pages of the picture book that her mother is reading. Her eyes flutter back, then droop and close. As she finally drifts to sleep, the soft, pudgy fingers of her left hand, twirl her silky hair, slower, and slower, and slower, until, at last, they stop.
I believe that human beings are evolutionarily programmed to touch, to collect and to create objects of beauty. I believe that the physical act of touching, like that of eating, releases endorphins in our brains that cause us pleasure, cause chemical changes at a cellular level that help our immune systems, and, ultimately, cause us to both repeat that behavior and genetically pass it on to our children.
I believe our desire to collect objects, has helped our species to survive. Each woman who has stashed an immense store of fabric to make quilts, more than is physically possible to utilize in one lifetime, is the inheritor of the genes that allowed her fore bearers to snuggle their children in their collected animal skins during the ice ages. They survived. Their children survived. And the love of the feel of the fur on their faces also survived.
Thus, we, right now, are the inheritors of the genetic pool that has survived eons by touching and collecting objects of function and thus, desirability.
But what of beauty? Intrinsically, there is no such thing. It is our appreciation of a quality or desired characteristic that makes it considered beautiful. Objects, by themselves, are neutral. And yet, we collecting human beings value function, novelty, and rarity.
I create because it gives me an almost physical pleasure. The endorphins are releasing as I touch my beads and feel excitement and wonder as the glass changes color. I create to experience that creative, brain chemical high. I create because I can. I create because I must. I create because I exist.
"A shaft of golden sunlight streaming in the window," is one of Karen Bye's earliest memories, and she has been obsessed by color, light, and transparency, ever since. A dedicated dilettante, she has had serial obsessions: calligraphy, metal casting, home construction and design, stained glass, school teaching, obstetrical nursing, surgical nursing, graphic design, web page design, fiber arts, fabric dyeing, quilting, antiques, Victorian architecture, drafting, gardening, aromatherapy, hot springs, alternative healing, and domestic and international travel. For the last ten years, these eclectic interests have culminated in her desire to melt glass and play with fire.
She currently lives in Omak, Washington State, with her husband of 40 years, in an interestingly odd house that sits nestled in a narrow valley, surrounded by huge ancient metamorphic mountains, and tall pine trees.
