Why I Work in Light (Part 2)

Why I Work in Light (Part 2)

In part two of Why I Work in Light, I first want to tell you about one facet of my mother's candleholder business that I had a hand in, back in the 70s.

There used to be a large hotel—at least by New Hampshire standards—called the New Hampshire Highway Hotel, located in Concord. Long gone now, of course. It’s a mall these days, with a bunch of other things mixed in. Time marches on. yeah,,

My mother went down to the hotel at some point and tried to expand her business by selling some of her candleholders that she started making soon after she started making the wax candles.

She used tumblers and other types of drinking vessels as a base to hold the different designs she would make on these glasses using resin with different colored crushed glass mixed into the resin that would harden on the glasses. They looked great, gave a beautiful orange type of glow. Nice Mom..

Anyway, she sold 32! of these 6 inch tall candle holders to the hotel, which was the largest hotel in the area and had a great restaurant with 31 tables.

 Inside these candle holders were candles that I personally made, with the initial instruction, of course, from my mother, and every week I would have to go to the hotel, pick up all the candleholders, bring them home, clean them out, and fill them with the wax candles I would make from saved frozen orange juice concentrate cans,(remember those?..probably not..) which were perfect size to pour a 4 inch candle with a wick, take it out and slip it into the now cleaned candle holders that my mother had made. Messy, thankless work..(sniff)

Can’t believe I did that for about six months and thank the powers that be, they decided to go another route with the lighting of their tables, and luckily I was out of business, because it was a lot of work for almost nothing except my mother's admiration.Which was fine at the time. 

Anyway, that's one of the stories from Wayback when.

I’ve always been drawn to candlelight. I don’t know if my mother felt the same, but I’ve been fascinated by low light since I was a teenager—campfires, fire pits, and especially candles. There’s something calming about watching a flame. It dances endlessly in patterns that feel like they mean something, even though they don’t. Or maybe they do.  Matrix an all..

These days, We go to sleep each night with a single votive candle burning in one of my candleholders in the room. It lasts about two and a half hours—just long enough to make me happy and sleep. I get them from IKEA (they have the best candles, you can order them online too), and I have a whole collection of candleholders I can rotate depending on my mood. It might sound odd, but if you’ve never tried falling asleep with candlelight flickering nearby, I highly recommend it. It’s not expensive—100 votives cost around six bucks. They burn out by themselves.  Barring an earthquake, they're pretty safe inside my candleholders, even when you fall asleep!    Shamless pitch..

I also think that we as a species have a deep tie to low fire light, because, of course it was all there was for centuries, and that has become part of our collective consciousness, for lack of a better term, and I believe we all, in our heritage have experienced so many campfires and candles that they bring quite a comfort, familiarity and security.

And now, with the different types of candleholders I make, I can incorporate all kinds of awesome colors, and we all know the colors can affect us greatly, as in my favorite colors are the green and blues, and when I look at one of my candles with those colors in it, I can almost instantly feel calm and whatever is bothering me sometimes lessens, which is quite nice.

Anyway, I don't want these blog post to be too long because of attention span issues on the planet. 

Thanks for making it this far !