My Creative Sources

My creations usually begin with an topic, or a prompt, like images of space, or a outside prompt (like travel or a Venn diagram), or from inspiration from other mosaic artists, especially my teachers. This one was another way- by playing with materials that I’ve been given and using techniques I’ve been taught,

I was gifted a gorgeous but slightly broken handblown blue vase from Sandy Minniti Rudolph on my town’s “Everything is Free” Facebook page. I loved the color and material so much that I interrupted everything to break it into thick square tessera.

A bit later Sandy broke another vintage handblown vase, this one of orange milk glass. I tried to melt bits of it into filati, and it worked when I mixed it with a coordinating color of glass smalti. This is a technique I learned from Rachel Sager, master mosaicist/teacher/curator, who inspires me every day.

My friend Paul, whom I sing with in a chorus, gifted me with a huge amount of old slate floor tiles. I cleaned them up, drilled holes in one about 8 inches square so it would be hangable. I used a wet saw to slice some of the tiles into thin strips, that I then cut those into short lengths to use as tessera.

I then played with these and other things to make an abstract design. I have felt very ambivalent about this piece- the tension between flora/fauna imagery with the hard materials made me uneasy. I put in in my garden with some color coordinating rocks and other tinier mosaics. It still didn’t look right till I put it in another part of the garden among some lantana flowers.

Now I’m happy to write about it and post in my first blog. Let me know what you think.