“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field ... ” (Matthew 13:44).  

Harriet thought of herself as an ugly girl with an ugly name. The only part of her that was wider than her waist was her hips. She thought her ankles were bulky too. Her nose crooked slightly to the left, her front teeth were almost too long to keep in her mouth, and her dishwater blond hair hung as straight as straw to her shoulders.

If these features were not enough for any fifteen-year-old to have to endure, there was her name: Harriet, spelled with two r’s and only one t. It didn’t even have the cute ette ending, and the only nickname anyone ever gave her was Harry.

But Harriet knew God had not completely ignored her when He was dividing up beauty; she knew this because of her hands. Harriet’s hands were the one and only thing she liked about her body. Though her palms seemed almost as big around as the saucers for her grandmother’s teacups, her fingers were long and agile. When she picked up a charcoal pencil or paintbrush, when she took hold of modeling clay or knitting needles, Harriet’s hands created beautiful things. Harriet’s hands sketched the graceful lines of a white oak tree. They painted the shocking colors of begonias. They shaped a horse’s muscles or lacy socks for a baby.

When Harriet worked with her hands she was happy, but she was the happiest when her hands were working with glass. Mrs. Masque, the art teacher at Wilson High School, recognized Harriet’s creative skills the first week of freshman year. The teacher let her do projects that would have been chaos with most of the other students.

The beginning of her sophomore year, Mrs. Masque taught Harriet to copy patterns onto sheets of colored glass. Then she taught Harriet to cut the glass with a small diamond wheel, wrap the edges in copper tape, and then solder the shapes together into stained glass windows.

When Harriet worked with the glass during fifth period in the art room, she could almost believe she was beautiful.

Abigail, on the other hand, was beautiful. She had the long, lean legs of a cross-country runner and a narrow waist to match. When Abigail smiled, her nose crinkled ever so slightly and two perfectly organized rows of teeth flashed into view. Her hair was naturally curly and the exact color of milk chocolate. Even her nickname was beautiful. Just about everybody called her Abby.

Abby didn’t mind being beautiful. Most of the time she enjoyed it. But Abby also knew that her legs and her hair and her teeth, pretty as they looked, were not something she could take credit for. She had no control over being beautiful. The best parts of her mom and dad just got mixed together so her hair curled and her nose crinkled. Abby was grateful, but she wanted something more. She wanted to be responsible for making something beautiful in the world.

So Abby signed up for Mrs. Masque’s fifth period art class. The class was called “Three-dimensional Collage,” and it was open to anybody. Abby had tried the life drawing class and ended up with a sketchbook full of stick figures and scribbles. The next year she had taken the watercolor painting class and only managed to smear her colors into a translucent brown.

Abby almost gave up hope of having a creative talent when she found out what collage was—assembling any collection of found objects into a kind of picture. She could use anything from magazine pictures and old birthday cards to pieces of satin, stained glass or maple leaves. Abby knew she could collect pretty things. She gathered all kinds of paper and ribbon and brought them to class. But when she tried to put them together, she just ended up with a mess. The more she worked on her collage, the more it looked like a half-full garbage can.

By the middle of the semester, when Abby came to fifth period in the art room, she felt ugly and useless.

One Wednesday, Mrs. Masque saw how frustrated Abby was and suggested she walk around the room and take a look at what some of the other students were doing with their collages. Many of the projects had cool designs and funky colors. Abby liked them but couldn’t quite figure out how those kids had turned drinking straws and grocery ads into such awesome pictures. She was starting to think she had collected all of the wrong kinds of stuff when she came to a table at the back of the room and saw the most beautiful piece of art she could imagine.

Crimson, lavender, teal and cobalt blue pieces of glass were cut in the shapes of leaves and flower petals. These were interlinked on top of the table with small wedges of mirrors and clear glass so that some of the ceiling light was reflected back and some of the brown table showed through.

“Is this your collage?” Abby asked the girl bent over the glass pieces, carefully wrapping each individual section in copper foil tape.

“Of course,” Harriet said.

“It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Abby said. She glanced back to her pile of garbage on the table at the front of the room. Now she was more ashamed than ever at its ugliness.

Meanwhile, Harriet looked up from her cut glass into the perfect, white smile and chocolate curls of her classmate. And when she did, Harriet forgot all about the beauty of her glass. She only remembered her own crooked nose and bulky ankles; she remembered her own ugliness.

Harriet and Abby stood looking at each other in the art room, both desperately wanting what the other girl had. They stood looking at each other in silence until Mrs. Masque came over and put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“No artist ever finished her work by wishing it was done,” the teacher said. “You will both need to keep working.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Abby moaned. “I’m stuck.”

“I have an idea,” Mrs. Masque said, turning to Harriet. “I want you two to work together on your projects from now on. Abby, bring your things back to this table for the rest of the term.”

She did as the teacher asked, dragging her shoebox of odds and ends over to where Harriet was working. “I don’t know if this is the best idea,” Abby said, balancing her shoebox on her hip with one hand. “Nothing I touch has ever turned out beautiful. Not like this.” Abby bent and brushed the tip of her finger over a perfect circle of Harriet’s blue glass.

As she did, the shoebox opened, tumbling its contents—marbles and ivory buttons, costume jewelry pins and picture postcards—out over the delicate glass shapes. Abby reached out clumsily to protect Harriet’s work and accidentally bumped the table hard with her elbow, sending most of Harriet’s mirror and stained glass pieces—the whole unfinished collage—to the floor where it shattered with a sound like a scream.

The two sat together the next day, and the next. For a week they hardly said a word to each other and hardly worked on their collages. Harriet couldn’t bring herself to begin all over again, and Abby didn’t have the will to start in the first place.

“These ordinary items,” Mrs. Masque said to the class the next Thursday, “these candy wrappers and shoelaces, these bits of broken china and leftover wood screws, these are the common things that surround us every day. How can they be made into art? How can they be made into something beautiful? They can be transformed from ordinary into extraordinary with your eyes and with your hands.

“You must have eyes to see the treasure hiding inside the ugly, common-place stuff,” Mrs. Masque said. “You must have hands that set free the beauty. Art can be hidden in the most ordinary places. Beauty is most beautiful when you least expect it. It’s like a muddy field suddenly blooming with sunflowers. There are gorgeous treasures buried in what seem like the ugliest places.”

Mrs. Masque ended her lecture, and the class faced their collage materials again. Harriet and Abby looked at the mixed-up pile of buttons and glass and paper and ribbon on their table. Then they looked each other in the eye for the first time.

“We have to find the treasure,” Abby said.

Harriet nodded. “Maybe we can look together.” 

“I’ll look all you want,” Abby said, “but I’m not going to touch anything this time.”

Harriet tried to hide her smile, but ended up giggling out loud. When Abby joined in, Harriet took her classmate’s hand and placed a copper-wrapped circle of lavender glass in her palm. It was one of the remaining intact pieces from Harriet’s original project.

The treasure hunt had begun.

Abby arranged the leftover pieces of colored glass and mirror. Harriet sorted through postcards and beads. The girls pointed and organized. They frowned over the objects on the table like a puzzle they had to put together. Glass joined with button. Birthday card was framed in glass. Mirrors and colors and beads and ribbon slowly came together into one work.

Harriet showed Abby how to wrap the objects carefully in copper tape, then Harriet gently soldered the work together. Piece by piece, the individual, ordinary things came together into an extraordinary image.

When they were finished, Abby and Harriet’s stained glass window collage shone with rainbow colors in soft curves and straight lines. A border of glass-petaled flowers with beaded centers framed small images from postcards and birthday greetings. Ivory buttons and old-fashioned jewelry created a setting for the centerpiece of their collage. It was a last-minute inspiration, an envelope-sized mirror.

Harriet and Abby set their work in the classroom window when they finished. The afternoon sun shone through the colored glass and cast rainbows on the floor. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood admiring their collage—the way that flowers and marbles and satin ribbon had become art. Finally, their eyes came to rest on the image in the center. Their own faces, side by side, reflected back at them, surrounded by color and light.

“Beautiful,” Mrs. Masque said, watching from the other side of the room.

“Beautiful,” Harriet and Abby whispered.

And it was.