Tea to Sea to Me

There’s lots of Swampscott on the New Jersey Shore, today.

Mostly water-worn bits and pieces that hand picked at her feet, starting and stopping day after day on Swampscott beaches.

She arranged the shards and sea glass into mosaics many of which picture Swampscott scenes.

So at her booth this weekend at the National Sea Glass Festival in Long Branch, New Jersey visitors will see not only colorful pieces of sea glass but local color of the Swampscott kind.  

Fisherman’s Beach is there in a mosaic or two.

Ghosts of fishermen, too.

Tea cups, saucers and plates that likely slipped from the harried kitchen hands and waitresses at the Lincoln House Point Hotel and were later tossed into the sea make her piece: Tea to Sea to Me.

Trujillo, who grew up in Chicago and studied art in college in Colorado, raised a family out there and taught art at a community college.

She first saw a piece of sea glass five years ago when she came to Swampscott.

“I didn’t even know what it was,” she said.

She soon figured that she could make something of the glass.

She came to Swampscott to be with an old boyfriend.  He grew up in Swampscott and went college in Colorado where the two met.

Forty or so years later, after no contact, they reconnected in a phone call. Apparently they were both thinking about each other.

Trujillo puts a lot of herself in her sea glass art, as well.

So her mosaics assemble pieces of Swampscott’s past and Judy Trujillo’s past and present.

All picked from the cold-water shore.

Her art is on display at across from Fisherman’s Beach in Swampscott.

It’s also on display in Long Branch today and tomorrow.