Opening Night at Zakay Glass Creations Gallery

Zakay Glass Creations

I made the drive down to Bangalow (at the last minute) from Brisbane to attend the opening night celebrations of Zakay Glass Creations Gallery.

Shop 3, Level 1, 42 Byron Street
(above Summerland Credit Union)
Bangalow, NSW 2479 Australia

I like how the street number for the gallery is 42 and that you have to walk up a stairway, and that the gallery is over the top of the "Summerland" Credit union.
" The Summerland is the name given by Theosophists, Wiccans and some earth-based contemporary pagan religions to their conceptualization of an afterlife."
The Summerland
"A common element is that the soul has little, if any, recollection of the Summerland once it arrives on the mortal plane again."

Michelle Macnamara's series 
"It's a Wonderful Life".

"The basic Wiccan belief of reincarnation is that you
are energy, a shapeless, sexless form that moves from one body which
is no longer needed to the next. 
You are placed on Earth to learn a lesson. 
Each incarnation you are born into, you must learn or relearn
a different lesson through experiencing a variety of different
lifestyles. 
When you have learned all you need to learn in your
present life, you move on, die. 
Death is not seen as a punishment or
a bad thing, but in a way, it's a good thing. 
It means you have completed one step on the incarnal ladder. 
After you die, you are brought to the Summerland which is kind of like the Wiccan equivalent of Heaven, but since we have no devil, we have no Hell. 
The Summerland is where the spirits that presently do not have an

earthly body wait for the right time to return to Earth."
Summerland - An Introduction

I ended up buying a star/merkabah similar to the one pictured above, which now hangs in my computer room above me.
Merkabah

My Merkabah hanging from the roof

Sparrow/Self-Reliance Syncs

The above painting reminded me of this old post of mine -
Supermarket Signs?
There were some great works for sale on the night, if you had a lot more money on your credit card than I had.
Just take a look at some of the other beautiful works displayed in the gallery.

Link to see a Zakay Glass Creations
Instagram featuring the above star

Green light from the star above
shining on the road below

Some of the artworks used light that was shone through them, like sunlight or artificial light coming through the artwork pictured above. 
While others were fitted with their own internal light, which shone outwards like the artwork pictured below.

It turned out to be a good day for me even though I struck the worst traffic I had ever been in getting down to Bangalow from Brisbane.
Maybe I just needed a better vehicle?-)

Another surprise for me when I finally made it into Bangalow was that the annual Bangalow Show was on, and I got a chance to walk around and take a look at my first Bangalow Show.

Beautiful old showground it was, too.

This ride didn't seem too popular with the kids
 when I was there for some reason

The two artists of the night, Asaf Zakay 

and Michelle Macnamara

A wonderful afternoon turned in to a wonderful night.
And I capped the night off with a meal and a couple of fortune cookies from the Chinese restaurant across the road, before driving back to Brisbane to hang my artwork.

I liked one of the fortunes so much that I now keep it in my wallet.

But I'll bet they tell that to all of their customers;-)

UPDATE: 13th Dec, 2014

I was going to mention the first message I got from the eight fortune cookies I bought on the night, but I couldn't find it, and without proof of a photo I thought it wasn't worth mentioning it.

But I found it in a pile of brochures this morning and thought that I should mention that I ran into two ladies who had left Zackay's Gallery and were having a meal in the outdoor section of the Chinese restaurant.

One of the ladies stopped me when I was going in to order my meal when she saw I had a bag from Zackay's and asked me what I had purchased.
Turns out she had purchased a similar artwork to mine and I ended up chatting to the two ladies about the night, before I looked at my watch and thought I had better order my meal before the restaurant closed for the night.
I mentioned that I was going to buy some fortune cookies, just for fun.

The reason I wanted to buy some fortune cookies was that I had come across the above novel cover used in a box at work for packaging.
There were no other parts of the novel to be  found in the box.
I remembered writing a post about Bryce Courtenay a while back, but I never ended up buying one of his novels, so I thought that maybe I should buy this book, or some fortune cookies, or both.
Bryce Courtenay: The Power of One
When I went to order my meal I was told inside dining was now closed, but I was quite welcome to order takeaway and could use the outdoor dining tables to eat at.
But the only table I could sit at was the table where the two ladies were sitting at, so I went back and sat there and we carried on talking.
One of the ladies asked me what my fortune was in my first cookie, but I wasn't game to show them the first one, so I just showed them the one I had placed in my wallet, not mentioning the first one I had opened. 

Fingers crossed:-)