The Eyes Have It!

Yesterday I had a meeting in the morning with a group of volunteers, and we were talking about our annual Estate Sale, a really fun event with boxes of stuff delivered by lots of different well meaning people, and one never knows what we will get.

I explained that some people sneak in boxes of recycling to school, assuming we need their old milk cartons and toilet paper tubes. This is not for our sale, but we assume it’s for our children’s programs and we usually have to recycle it ourselves.

This led me into the unusual kinds of items people give me, and often it’s an amazing adventure. I often say no, but if it’s crazy enough I’ll go for it figuring someone will use it in their art work. We also get found art work from dumpsters all over town; everyone figures they should be on the Antiques Roadshow and that they’ve found the Mona Lisa in the trash. And sometimes, while not the mother lode, they do get good stuff.

A man in Dundas in the 50’s and 60’s created glass eyes, prosthetic eyes for those in need. I guess today they are made of plastic and come from China, but in the day, they were glass and made locally. His collection of perhaps samples, were offered to me and I went for it. For several years I’ve had them in my desk and every now and then they come up and some artist takes some to include in a work.

Yesterday, at the end of the meeting, I was delighted as I mentioned them and everyone wanted to see them. I brought in the bag and it was like kids in a candy shop. A group of adults, with great delight, sat around and played with the eyes, mostly trying to make matched pairs, and trying them on for size. People stayed for a long time, because everyone wanted some, and I offered them the opportunity to take a pair. They will appear in a quilt, in some pottery pieces and maybe be a conversation piece on a coffee table somewhere in town. I hovered over the bag in the end because I wanted some of them back for another time.

Who knew that a great ice breaker at any gathering would be a bowl of eyes?