Food Desert

by Lynn Bridge

10 1/2″ x 12 1/2″ x 2 1/2″

Which of you has had to change your diet dramatically by eliminating one or more food categories?  If you have, you are probably familiar with the feelings of panic when you realize that nothing your are accustomed to eating is an option any longer.  Suddenly, it seems as if there is NOTHING TO EAT!

After a little research, and quite a bit of adjustment in thinking, you may conclude that there really are a lot of options, but you have to get used to them.  These two steps- the realization that eating as you have known it is gone, and that old buying, cooking, and ordering habits must be broken, fast- are like wandering in the desert.  Your mind is parched and numb from the strangeness, and hopelessness sets in at the prospect of an unbroken rocky landscape, until you find your way back to the garden verdant.

This plate is my first mosaic in which I broke every piece of stone with my hammer and hardie at the same time every piece of glass was formed in my kiln.  In other words, every tessera was hard-won!  (However, I cannot claim to have made the chopsticks.)