It's amazing the different things creative minds can create out of the same main ingredient.
The art created as part of a contest called "Show Us Your Teal" is on display at the Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery this month, and though the pieces of glass art all include a piece of teal-coloured glass, they are incredibly different.
The contest was sponsored by Prairie Glass, owned by Elaina Adams of Humboldt.
The contest kicked off last fall, Adams explained, when she discovered a plethora of teal coloured glass in her studio.
Teal, she noted, is a strong colour that's not commonly used for anything like flowers or birds, and yet it kept coming into her studio with shipments of other coloured glass.
Noticing she had amassed quite a large collection of teal-coloured glass, she decided to challenge her fellow glass artists to use it.
Each participant was given a piece of teal-coloured glass and the challenge to create a piece of glass art using a recognizable amount of the teal in their creation.
Glass artists from all over Saskatchewan - Swift Current, Porcupine Plain, Saskatoon and Humboldt - signed up for the contest, and in the end, 10 works of art were put up for judging.
The completed pieces show a wide variety of glass working methods, Adams noted - mosaics, copper foil, glass painting, fusing, wire work, 3-D, stepping stones, copper inclusions and laminating.
"The participants truly embraced the challenge and the variety of creativity is shown," Adams said. "It's unbelievable what people came up with. We have some very creative people in this province."
All the pieces were on display at the Saskatchewan Glassworkers' Guild's annual art show April 15-17.
The people in attendance at the show voted for their favourite piece.
First place went to "Aurora the Class Inukshuk" made by Rita Brown, who recently retired back to Saskatchewan after living in Yellowknife for 34 years.
Second place went to a piece called "The Hoard" by Louisa Ferguson, and third place to "Forgotten Reflections" by Kim Dickenson.
The point of the contest was to have fun with the glass, Adams noted, and they did. Already, people have been asking about another contest for this year.
The pieces entered in the contest will be up at the Humboldt museum for May and June. Contact information for the artists is available there, as part of the exhibit.
