Chelsea is a small tight-knit community that has experienced
several tragedies. In 2002, local artist Lorin Kummer received an
ammonite fossil
that served as the inspiration for a healing work of art to restore
hope in the Chelsea community devastated by the tragic accidents
and events. Lorin is also a trained therapist who uses art and
creative expression for healing.
Lorin Kummer's vision developed as a glass mosaic in the spiral
shape of an ammonite. The community art project came to fruition
under a partnership with the non-profit Chelsea Center for the
Arts. During the Summer of 2003, hundreds of community volunteers
working under the guidance of Lorin Kummer and local artists Bill
Darwin II, Marsi Darwin, Janice Stevens Botsford, Ric DeTroyer, and
Nancy Sol, cut and laid thousands of glass tiles. Chelsea artist
Karen Smith created the fused glass centerpiece.
The mosaic panels were moved to the Timbertown Park site in late
summer and installed, grouted, and cleaned under the direction of
craftsman Hershey Card. Community volunteers were also involved in
the laying of the brick pavers around the pathway.
The Pathway to Renewal was dedicated on September 14,
2003.
There are a couple of seating areas where people can come to
admire and contemplate the beauty and meaning of the pathway. Stage
1 will take you to one of the seating areas. While you are here,
you are invited to contemplate the artist's words explaining the
piece:
Ideas, hopes, dreams and lives sometimes shatter at the most
unexpected times. Changes in our circumstances, our beliefs, our
bodies, our loved ones, even our country, can leave us feeling
fragmented and disconnected. How can we create a new life, a new
vision of ourselves, even our world; from the heap of broken
pieces, we are left with? Reaching into the shards is challenging
and frightening. Surviving traumatic loss and change, and finding
the way back to well-being and hope takes courage and
encouragement. As an artist and a therapist, I proposed to engage
the community in an artistic partnership that facilitated the
rebuilding of beauty and the renewal of hope from shattered
fragments. Using tile broken glass and mortar, I proposed to engage
our communities' creative human spirit in structured activities of
expressive art, shared thoughts, and remembrances. From shattered
pieces, a place of renewal and hope was created and established. A
place where one can come to remember, to reflect, and heal. In the
process, our community members found healing ways to work together
to integrate each of their unique pieces of brilliantly colored
human experience into a life mosaic of hope. The process of
creation was as important as the finished work.
The Story of the Pathway to Renewal began with the idea that
the healing gift of art could find a way to bring a community out
of its collective grief and into a renewed sense of hope. The idea
started in the mind of artist Lorin Kummer and then it grew to
include many others in a glorious collaboration of artists,
funders, and grass roots community members all sharing Kummer's
vision of a Spiral glass mosaic walkway created for healing, hope
and renewal.
The magic of the Pathway project was apparent to everyone who
worked on it. Inside the small garage studio of the local art
center people were coming together around an ambitious and
beautiful work of art that required many hands to bring it to life.
The fabrication of the mosaic took several months to complete, but
the experience of its creation will remain a lasting positive
memory for the many folks who lent their time, talent, money and
energy to see it completed. Blessings go to all those who shared in
this creative process.
The idea for the Pathway to Renewal, was born out of pain and
loss. Our small community had faced several tragedies in a short
period of time. Grief and sorrow from these events began to overlap
and overwhelm many. The isolation, sadness and loss that many were
feeling was described to the artist as feeling like a spiral, like
everything was out of sync. Words left on spoken, felt like leaves
strewn about our town, beautiful and sad, like an unexpected blast
of wintry cold coming out of the late summer skies, sending a
shivering reminder of the cold dark of winter.
The Pathway to Renewal starts with fallen leaves made from
stained glass. Glass is fragile. Yet, glass handled properly is
very strong, and amazingly beautiful. But if handled carelessly it
can also cut you. The artist chose glass to symbolize how fragile,
beautiful and dangerous life can often be.
The leaves strewn upon the sidewalk, were cut out of glass by
many members of the community who came in to help on the Pathway
project. Taught by artists about how to work with glass, many folks
came and created a special leaf for a loved one that they had lost
or wanted to remember or hold dear. Messages were written to loved
ones, on the back of these leaves and they were pressed one by one
into the wet cement. They symbolize the fall, when those first
leaves start to fall sometime unexpectedly at the first icy blast
of seasonal change.
You enter the spiral at Fall and walk through the spiral as
the seasons round backwards -- Fall to Summer, Summer to Spring,
Spring to Winter. Each panel is full of plants of healing, birds or
other animals that have spiritual significance or special healing
properties. When you reach Winter you are in the center of the
spiral. The Dark glass of Winter symbolizes the isolation and
darkness we feel in our deepest grief, the time when we are
wondering how we will ever be able to carry on. On the Pathway to
Renewal spiral when walked at a normal walking pace by the time you
reach the center you, feel a bit dizzy and disoriented and you look
up to get your bearings and as you do you see again the world
around you, nature in the park fields, children playing nearby, in
the distance you can see the clock tower of our town or the grain
elevators by the railroad tracks, our town, our home and somewhere
within those views -- strength and hope begin to return. When we
let ourselves feel connected again to nature, place and community,
we can begin to heal.
Looking outward, from the center of the spiral, we begin to
journey back. Now the seasons are in order, Winter to Spring,
Spring to Summer, Summer to Fall and as you reach the Fall this
time, you know it is coming, you know you can make it through the
fallen leaves because you have passed this way before. Looking out
over the sidewalk strewn with fallen leaves you may see another
person just starting down the path, reach out to them and share the
story of the Pathway, so that they too, can find their own way to
healing, hope and renewal.
