Artist Finds Her Calling in Sea Glass

HL Sea and Beach Glass Jewelry Booth at the 2024 Strawberry Festival

For Holly L’Hommedieu, working with sea glass seemed inevitable from the jump.

Before her first birthday in the double digits, L’Hommedieu’s focus when at the beach was already probing through the sand and picking up whatever she saw, which included sea glass.

“I grew up right down the road from the beach,” L’Hommedieu said. “I lived in Jamesport, so I had the Bay, which I could walk to. That’s the Bay that I grew up on. Then, I started to go to the Sound when I got a little bit older. I lived on the beach.”

What began as an interest has turned into a business for L’Hommedieu, as she is the owner of HL Sea and Beach Glass Jewelry , where she shares her specialization in handcrafted sea glass jewelry and collector pieces since 2003.

A significant component of L’Hommedieu’s work is attending shows, from the Strawberry Festival to the Annual Fair at Argyle Park, to showcase her products. Despite the abundance of events she features in, L’Hommedieu does not get the opportunity to participate in a sea glass-only spectacle all that often.

However, for a second straight year, she will have that chance at the Sea Glass Festival , where L’Hommedieu will be hosting a table on Sunday, July 21.

“The Sea Glass Festival out here is the first, official Sea Glass Festival that we’ve had,” L’Hommedieu said. “There are many times that I am at a show and people that live out here are like, ‘What exactly is sea glass?’ There are still people that do not know. Even though they walk the beach, they’re at the beach, they don’t really consider what it is. But something like this, word of mouth gets out and more people are aware of what it is, what it means, how special it is. Since we’ve recycled out here, we don’t have the amount of glass that we used to have.”

Despite the declining nature of sea glass spawns, which stems from a good cause, the 2024 Sea Glass Festival will be loaded with content about the product. Hosted by The Whaling Museum & Education Center in Cold Spring Harbor, the event will feature 13 artists and exhibitors, including L’Hommedieu, alongside a pair of keynote speakers: Mary McCarthy, a beachcombing educator and former vice president of the International Beachcombing Association and executive director of The Beachcombing Center, and George Wm. Fisher, an author that has written about Long Island’s bottles and medicines companies.

McCarthy and Fisher’s experience within their respective fields is mirrored by L’Hommedieu’s history with sea glass.

In 2003, L’Hommedieu’s uncle passed away, which inspired her to take many trips to the place she refers to as her “safe place”: the beach. During that time, L’Hommedieu added numerous shells and sea glass to her already-sizable collection and began pondering directions she could take the objects in.

“I [felt] like I was a hoarder,” L’Hommedieu said. “I had just finished my degree, I became a nurse. That was one more reason why I was spending more time on the beach, [to] sort of decompress, relax, not get stressed out about everyday work. One day, [I] came home from the beach and my mom was like, ‘Oh, look what you found.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to make jewelry from it.’ And she looked at me, I will never forget her face, ‘Now, wait a minute. You finished your nursing degree, and now you’re going to make jewelry out of trash that’s on the beach.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do that.’”

L’Hommedieu’s journey in the jewelry department was fully self-taught, as she read, watched videos and spent years perfecting her craft. In 2006, HL Sea and Beach Glass Jewelry became officially licensed as a business and last year, L’Hommedieu transitioned to full-time work in the business.

Sea Glass Festival to Return to Whaling Museum