Sometimes at an auction, I bid on badly broken items ... things that I don't really need but want to salvage, want to touch, want to transform so that others might see the unspoken stories they seem to be telling me. Such was this old, oak leaf mirror. Many of the individual leaves were hanging on by a single, rusty nail. Many were cracked. A few were missing. The quarter-inch mirror was damaged too, but I didn't care. I bid on it, and for somewhere in the neighborhood of $12.50 it became mine.
I glued some of the pieces together and rearranged others. A little gold metallic paint provided highlights and touched up some of the damage. The angel image was printed on a photocopy paper, and the ink was transferred to the mirror in an acrylic-to-acrylic process. Because the antique mirror is so thick, the reflection of the image is seen from the side.
Over the past week, Steve and I have been pouring UV filtering epoxy on a number of stitched fiber artworks. (Blog post is coming!) This mirror was positioned beside each piece and caught the over-flow of the epoxy. This was done in order to prevent the oak leaves from wiggling on their rather flimsy nails and to keep the glued pieces from separating. The epoxy stabilized the components of the frame while adding a shiny new surface. The damaged mirror now looks as if it had been one of those even older, wavy glass mirrors. From near ruin, this mirror was successfully transformed into a work of art ... saved ... to whisper stories from the past to people now and in the future. I'm really pleased with the results.
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