Art students create glass poppies to commemorate World War I
Although the wearing of poppies in honor of America’s war dead is traditionally done on Memorial Day, in Europe they are worn for Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, which is also Veterans Day in the United States.
In honor of U.S. veterans, while continuing to remember the Floridians who lost their lives fighting in World War I, the Memorial Park Association will sell a limited number of glass-blown poppies at its Sounds of Victory Veterans Day Concert in the park, Sunday, Nov. 11 at 5 p.m.
The locally-made glass poppies will be “planted” around the Eagle statues prior to the concert, then made available for purchase at $50 each to benefit the park. The Poppy Garden was made possible by a donation from the Hicks family.
The idea of the poppies came to Michele Luthin, MPA board vice president at large, when she came across a project where more than 800,000 ceramic poppies were created in London for each of the lives lost in the commonwealth during World War I.
“The Memorial Park Association hoped to create something similar, so we decided to create glass poppies, thinking they would be beautiful with the Florida sunshine shining through them and casting red shadows on the ground,” said Luthin. “We reached out to Brian Frus at Jacksonville University to see about creating the poppies with his students. Under his direction, we plan to create one poppy for every 10 Floridian lives lost in World War I, so 160 poppies total.”
Frus, associate professor of glass art, assembled a group of students, artists and veterans to help create four different shades of red poppies for the project.
“We hope the Poppy Garden will remind people why Memorial Park was created, as a memorial to all Floridians who died in World War I,” Luthin said.
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