Artist's Statement:
Ideas, hopes, dreams and lives sometimes shatter at the most unexpected times. Changes in our circumstances, our beliefs, our bodies, our loved ones, even our country, can leave us feeling fragmented and disconnected. How can we create a new life, a new vision of ourselves, even our world; from the heap of broken pieces, we are left with? Reaching into the shards is challenging and frightening. Surviving traumatic loss and change, and finding the way back to well-being and hope takes courage and encouragement.
As an artist and a therapist, I proposed to engage the community in an artistic partnership that facilitated the rebuilding of beauty and the renewal of hope from shattered fragments. Using tile broken glass and mortar, I proposed to engage our communities' creative human spirit in structured activities of expressive art, shared thoughts, and remembrances. From shattered pieces, a place of renewal and hope was created and established. A place where one can come to remember, to reflect, and heal. In the process, our community members found healing ways to work together to integrate each of their unique pieces of brilliantly colored human experience into a life mosaic of hope. The process of creation was as important as the finished work.
Lorin Kummer
2003

The Story of the Pathway to Renewal began with the idea that the healing gift of art could find a way to bring a community out of its collective grief and into a renewed sense of hope. The idea started in the mind of artist Lorin Kummer and then it grew to include many others in a glorious collaboration of artists, funders, and grass roots community members all sharing Kummer's vision of a Spiral glass mosaic walkway created for healing , hope and renewal.

The magic of the Pathway project was apparent to everyone who worked on it. Inside the small garage studio of the local art center people were coming together around an ambitious and beautiful work of art that required many hands to bring it to life. The fabrication of the mosaic took several months to complete, but the experience of its creation will remain a lasting positive memory for the many folks who lent their time, talent, money and energy to see it completed. Blessings go to all those who shared in this creative process.

The idea for the Pathway to Renewal, was born out of pain and loss. Our small community had faced several tragedies in a short period of time. Grief and sorrow from these events began to overlap and overwhelm many. The isolation, sadness and loss that many were feeling was described to the artist as feeling like a spiral, like everything was out of sync. Words left on spoken, felt like leaves strewn about our town, beautiful and sad, like an unexpected blast of wintry cold coming out of the late summer skies, sending a shivering reminder of the cold dark of winter.

Walking the Pathway to Renewal

The Pathway to Renewal starts with fallen leaves made from stained glass. Glass is fragile. Yet, glass handled properly is very strong, and amazingly beautiful. But if handled carelessly it can also cut you. The artist chose glass to symbolize how fragile, beautiful and dangerous life can often be.

The leaves strewn upon the sidewalk, were cut out of glass by many members of the community who came in to help on the Pathway project. Taught by artists about how to work with glass, many folks came and created a special leaf for a loved one that they had lost or wanted to remember or hold dear. Messages were written to loved ones, on the back of these leaves and they were pressed one by one into the wet cement. They symbolize the fall, when those first leaves start to fall sometime unexpectedly at the first icy blast of seasonal change.

You enter the spiral at Fall and walk through the spiral as the seasons round backwards- Fall to Summer, Summer to Spring, Spring to Winter. Each panel is full of plants of healing, birds or other animals that have spiritual significance or special healing properties.

When you reach Winter you are in the center of the spiral.. The Dark glass of Winter symbolizes the isolation and darkness we feel in our deepest grief, the time when we are wondering how we will ever be able to carry on. On the Pathway to Renewal spiral when walked at a normal walking pace by the time you reach the center you, feel a bit dizzy and disoriented and you look up to get your bearings and as you do you see again the world around you, nature in the park fields, children playing nearby, in the distance you can see the clock tower of our town or the grain elevators by the railroad tracks, our town, our home and somewhere within those views- strength and hope begin to return. When we let ourselves feel connected again to nature, place and community, we can begin to heal.

Looking outward, from the center of the spiral, we begin to journey back. Now the seasons are in order, Winter to Spring , Spring to Summer, Summer to Fall and as you reach the Fall this time, you know it is coming, you know you can make it through the fallen leaves because you have passed this way before. Looking out over the sidewalk strewn with fallen leaves you may see another person just starting down the path, reach out to them and share the story of the Pathway, so that they too, can find their own way to healing, hope and renewal.
Lorin Kummer
2004

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