KYE

Every once in a while, inspiration walks through the front door instead of waiting in the studio.

Several summers ago, two young women visiting Vinalhaven stopped into my store while they were staying on Greens Island as part of the Atlantic Challenge program. One of them had the most remarkable shade of turquoise hair I had ever seen. It wasn't loud or theatrical. It was luminous. Depending on how the light caught it, the color shifted between clear tropical water, old blue-green bottle glass, and the deep blue-green that appears in the ocean on a perfectly calm August morning. I found myself staring just a little longer than was polite before finally saying, "I have to try to make that color."

Her name was Kye, and before she left I asked if she would share her contact information because I wanted to let her know if I ever managed to capture it in glass. Back in the studio I began experimenting, chasing not just the color itself, but the feeling it left behind. When the glass finally emerged from the kiln with that same shimmering mix of turquoise and blue, I reached out to Kye, thanked her for the unexpected gift of inspiration, and sent her a collection of jewelry made in the color she had unknowingly inspired.

That was four years ago, and ever since then I've wanted to make Kye again. This past winter, as I was planning my year of color, I kept coming back to this one. Kye belongs to summer in my mind. It belongs to warm afternoons by the water, flowers reaching their peak, salt on your skin after an evening swim, and those impossibly long August evenings that make you wish the season could linger just a little longer.

For me, summer has never been just a season. It's the sound of screen doors, towels drying on the line, flowers pushing themselves toward the sun, the harbor sparkling under an endless blue sky, and that wonderful feeling that there's still plenty of daylight left even after dinner. Kye carries all of that with it. Every piece catches the light a little differently, reflecting the colors that first stopped me in my tracks all those years ago and reminding me that some of life's most memorable moments begin with simply paying attention to the beauty standing right in front of us.