Essential Items

March - April 2020

This piece is unlike my previous work for many reasons. The most obvious being that there is nothing made of hot glass. But I think that this piece is also extremely unique because of the circumstances of which it is the result of. “Essential Items” is journal and collection of articles about items that quickly became in high demand at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and finishes with a stained glass piece that was created during these times as a reflection on reality that we are living. Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bottled water, and face masks flew off the shelves as soon as there were announcements of a potential pandemic. “Essential Items” features these items that have become so precious to us.  The item that I chose to recreate in stained glass was something that my apartment didn’t have and there was no way that any grocery stores around me would have in stock at the start of the pandemic. I didn’t realize the severity of the pandemic until The Ohio State University emailed the students, faculty, and staff on March 9th with the decision to continue our classes online, but by that time I was too late to stock up on my own essential items. It was then that I thought of these once common, household items as now being precious and sacred. This concept quickly made me think of religion and the stained glass that is so proudly displayed in Catholic churches. Thus, the idea of a stained glass toilet paper roll was brought into this world.

Materials:

Stained Glass