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The Story

Billions of years after the Big Bang (portrayed on stained glass), life began on the planet Earth.  Then thousands of years ago man appeared, who could not only add, he could multiply - what a breakthrough!  In due time the abacus was invented to facilitate the counting.  Man, always a curious creature, was also exploring the world (antique map in the background on the right) and the solar system (satellite image at the center of the background).  Finally, with the invention of the computer, the virtual world was encountered … and it is the child riding the mouse that will lead the way.

In the meantime, there are many detours and diversions along the way. We have couple of clowns conversing on the internet, their mundane and trivial thoughts are converted to pearls of wisdom and sent on to others (one of the clowns is masked depicting unknown/anonymous correspondents) in the chat rooms.  The pearls continue traveling through the World Wide Web, sometimes as misconceptions (black pearls) sometimes as distortions/lies (irregular pearls) and now and then as golden concepts of truth.

The title of this box is a play on an old 1960s commercial about Virginia Slims (a cigarette brand targeted toward women). This box is also one of the few that was renamed and redesigned. They original title was “http://” and it did not have stained glass on it, which when added, provided another dimension to the piece.

Recollection by son, Rich: I remember my Dad talking about how late one night while he was in bed he heard a loud crash. The next morning he came downstairs to see this box had fallen off the wall. What was at first a horrible site of a partially destroyed piece of art soon became an opportunity to re-imagine the piece to what you see today.