Catching a wave
Artists create a mural out of sea glass
Carol Sloan-Smith and Holly Rader warm their hands on cups of tea and reflect on how some unseasonably dreary June weather didn't manage to mar the week they've just had, installing a mural made of sea glass at the Spectacle Island Visitors' Center .
The two artists, stopping to chat at a Hingham coffee shop, say they were determined to have a good time, even as they hauled hundreds of pounds of sea glass through choppy ocean waters to do a job for which they're not being paid.
"We always said the day this stops being fun is the day we stop doing it," Rader said of their business, All Cracked Up, which turns found objects into works of art.
The mural -- which will be unveiled at a ceremony on the island tomorrow -- has been in the works for a long time.
Five years ago, Smith-Sloan and Rader heard there was a call for mosaic artwork on the Boston Harbor Islands. Since they regularly scavenged the shores of Spectacle Island for the ocean-polished, colorful shards that were the basis of their work, they thought a mural made from sea glass would be the perfect way to "give something back." They also wanted to promote what was then a fledgling business.
"We knew there was so much [sea glass] out there," Rader said. "We wanted to make something out of it for the island."
They drew up a proposal, and asked for help from their friend Susan Snow-Cotter, director of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, who loved the idea. For the next few years, Snow-Cotter -- a longtime environmentalist -- lobbied on behalf of her friends, to no avail. The project seemed mired in red tape.
Then, in September, Snow-Cotter, then 48, was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. By December, she had died, leaving her husband, John, two children, and a host of friends and colleagues behind.
Sloan-Smith and Rader were eager to commemorate their friend's life and work, so they pressed ahead with the mural proposal. They found it strangely fitting that only then did they finally get the go-ahead to install it -- and to dedicate it in Snow-Cotter's memory.
With the same enthusiasm that has caused their business to triple since 2001, the two friends headed out to Spectacle in May and collected between 300 and 400 pounds of mainly blue and green sea glass.
"It's all historical stuff," said Rader of the shards, which include pieces of Blue Willow pottery, Noxzema cold-cream jars,
They chose a blank wall in the visitors' center, and drew an immense wave in pencil. Each day for a week, they taped off an area, painted it with a mixture of grout and adhesive and affixed hundreds of pieces of sea glass.
"We asked everyone who came through to install a piece," said Smith-Sloan, who praised the support of the island staff for the project.
Alan Rilla, caretaker of Spectacle Island, said the mural "honors Susan Cotter's tireless effort to restore Boston Harbor and the islands. "Like the island itself," he said, "the mural reminds visitors that we can turn trash into treasure. And we will treasure this piece of art for a long time."
Spectacle Island, which is named for two drumlins connected by a sand bar, resembling a pair of glasses, is rife with history, not all of it pretty. In the 1600s it was used as a quarantine station for people with smallpox and other diseases. Later it was home to a gambling resort and a brothel. It was shut down by authorities before being reopened as a horse-rendering plant and finally a garbage dump, which was closed in 1959.
In 1992, the island was capped with tons of dirt that was excavated for the Ted William Tunnel. Workers built a seawall, then laid topsoil that allowed trees and shrubs to grow.
The city and the Department of Conservation and Recreation continued improving the 105-acre island by adding a marina and the visitors' center, which operates with renewable energy and features a cafe that's open all summer. There are five miles of hiking trails on Spectacle, and it's the only island with lifeguarded swimming beaches.
For more information, go to www.bostonislands.org. 