I have spent much of my life watching people look at other people.

My sister taught me why.

She was severely disabled. She couldn’t control her arms or legs, and when she was born, doctors told my mother she would never walk or talk and probably wouldn’t live very long.

But when my sister was three, she showed us something very different.

My sister and I were sitting on the living room floor while I colored. I would ask her for a particular crayon, and she would reach as best she could and fling the color I asked for across the floor to me.

My mother was watching.

She looked at my sister and said, “If you can hear me, blink your eyes.”

My sister blinked.

My mother cried.

My sister understood far more than anyone had realized.

I think I became very sensitive to the way people look at one another because of her. I watched people stare at my sister, and I learned that what we see when we look at someone isn’t necessarily who that person is.

Years later, I created whimsical jewelry to raise money for charities. I made little groups of women—young and old, tall and short, thin and full, fancy and frumpy, with many different skin tones.

When I took them to market, something unexpected happened.

People would look at the groups and tell me who they were.

“That’s my mother and my sisters.”

“Those are my college girlfriends.”

“That’s my family.”

They weren’t seeing the women I had made.

They were seeing their people.

And then one day, I realized something that horrified me.

I had forgotten someone.

For all my effort to include women of different ages, sizes, colors and shapes, I had forgotten my own sister.

I immediately made women in wheelchairs. My sister loved them. She sold some to her friends to help raise money for charity.

I think about that experience now when I look at the little glass people filling my studio.

Each one seems to have a personality. An expression. A story.

And when I put them together, something happens.

They become a community.

Some seem to be friends. Some might be family. Maybe one owns a shop and another is a customer. Maybe two have known each other forever. Maybe one is simply passing through.

I don’t really decide who they are.

You do.

I make the people, but the viewer creates the relationships.

And perhaps that is what we do all the time. We look at someone and imagine who they are. Sometimes we’re right. Sometimes we’re not.

But if we look a little longer, we might see something we hadn’t noticed before.

That’s what I hope happens when you meet my glass people.

I’ll be showing them during the Ojai Studio Artists Tour, October 9, 10 and 11.

Come meet them.

Take a little time with them.

See who you recognize.

And maybe you’ll find someone who reminds you of a person you love.

Or maybe—

you’ll recognize yourself.