When the #HeartsinSF Campaign approached the Institute of Mosaic Art this fall in search of qualified mosaic artists who might want to create some of the mini hearts, four artists stepped up to the challenge.
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Blog
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A Linda Biggers eggshell mosaic currently on view in the IMA store. You have to see it to believe it.
Eggshells? For Mosaics? The Art and Craft of Linda Biggers
Eggshells are durable. They are portable. They take up little space and are easy to clean up. The materials are cheap! And eggshell mosaics sell really, really well.
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Michael Kruzich : Technique is the Language of Any Art
“Techniques are languages," mosaicist and professional dancer Michael Kruzich says. “There are MANY languages, but it takes time and commitment to ‘doing the work’ to become fluent enough to communicate in that language."
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"Groundwater"by Deborah Verfaillie
Water: Wellspring of Life and Creativity
With “El Niño” waiting in the wings to relieve a desiccated California this winter -- or not! -- we’ve finally become aware that water is our most precious resource. Our winters used to be synonymous with rain. Our rivers used to overflow their banks. Now water is the new gold.
This thinking is the focus of our new group show opening Saturday, November 14, with the title, “Water, Water, Everywhere…”
“When we first started thinking about a theme for a winter show, California and the West were years into a drought. We still are,” notes IMA proprietor Ilse Cordoni.
I thought about the traditional rain dances of many Indigenous peoples. Could we not at least ask art to invoke our respect for water, our love for it, our need?
We put out a call to mosaic artists, asking whether water had ever inspired their work. We received an outpouring of responses not only from the West but also from across the continent and as far away as Argentina. Apparently water is not only relevant but an enduring source of creativity.
This curated show offers the interpretations of 22 mosaic artists on the theme of water, from its multiple forms - snow, ice, rain, rivers, puddles, lakes, and seas - to the life that depends on it, to its magical visual properties. Happily, the subject also enables a demonstration of the infinite varieties of style in mosaic art.
The show includes the much-awarded glass-on-glass piece, Snowfell, by John Sollinger, who teaches at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and describes his technique as “mosaintings” - a blend of mosaic and painting.
Sollinger writes that the mountains and forests of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwest Oregon continually inspire him.
“In my cabin in the mountains I woke up to fresh snow one morning, saw a magnificent scene, took an image, and based Snowfell off that image several years later. We have had little snow since that image was taken, so I view it as a sign of climate change. We are losing mountain snowpack, which translates to less snow melt and runoff into our streams, lakes and rivers,” he cautions.
“I chose not to depict water, but to imply the beauty and necessity of water,” said Annette Markin from Reno, of her work, Abundance. “In everyday life, many of us take for granted the ease and abundance of this most coveted and necessary resource, so easily acquired, yet often received without thought or thanks. I think this piece creates an interesting conversation as opposed to just an image.”
Markin took her first mosaic classes with IMA founder Laurel True and says she is “very excited” to return to the Bay Area for this show.
As is Robin Moyher of Sacramento, who created a 3D water cycle mosaic depicting an ocean and wave, the clouds, rainfall and a waterfall flowing back to the ocean.
“I wanted the challenge of the 3D effect along with the message that water flows in a continuous cycle, always flowing somewhere,” Moyher says.
Randina Casenza, an East Bay mosaicist, says that in considering the water theme, “I thought about how luxurious water is, pouring freely from an infinite source. Of course, we are in a drought, so in my mosaic a finite amount of water flows from a container." She uses the exquisite, Italian, hand cut class called “trasparenti” to capture its properties of translucence. (P.S. We sell trasparenti in our store...)
North Bay resident Jane Russell says "I was driven by my desire to capture the beautiful reflectivity of falling rain or sleet” in her piece, City Sleet. She uses long, thin pieces of clear textured glass placed on their edge, with silvery beads at random intervals.
Guillermina Gómez’ vitreous tile piece, Rain Drops, which is traveling all the way from Buenos Aires, is an abstract study in blue that suggests the splash of falling water. Another work, by the Bay Area mosaic artist Kim Larson, also focuses on water droplets in a series of 3-D mosaicked substrates.
Jo-Ann Dao’s mosaic, Gliding the Pacific Currents, depicts not the ocean so much as one of the special creatures that live in it.
“I am fascinated by octopi and their beautiful fluid movement in the ocean,” says Dao. “There are over a million known species of plants and animals who live in our oceans and they all come in all kinds of weird shapes, sizes, and colors. I would like people to take a moment to see and get to know what a vital part they play in the health of our planet.”
The show also features work by several Berkeley and Bay Area mosaic artists, including Oakland’s Gina Dominguez; IMA staffers Jill Stevenson-Ritter, Randina Casenza, Deborah Block, and Laura Paull; and many others.
Alameda-based poet Emmanuel Williams, originally of Great Britain, will perform three of his poems about water on opening night.
When people come to the IMA gallery, they will pass through an outdoor patio that will feature, in addition to its permanent mosaic murals, a 6-foot ‘totem’ called Water Body by Donna Billick of Davis, California. Billick is co-director and co-founder of the Art / Science Fusion Program at the University of California, Davis, and is known far and wide for her community-based mosaic public works and statues.
"Water Body is bringing awareness to that our bodies are about 73 percent water,” she says. “Water flows along the veins of our earth and through the human body, being the source of all growth and life. This totem freezes a cascade of transparent glass and mosaic jewels in a call to prayer for our most precious resource, water.”
Water, Water, Everywhere opens Saturday, November 14 from 6-8 p.m. at the Institute of Mosaic Art, 805 Allston Way, in Berkeley, 94710. The reception is free and open to the public.
The show runs through January 12, 2016, and many of the works are for sale. The IMA is open to the public Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, except for holidays; please call ahead to confirm, at (510) 898-1174.
A Murder of Crows
The best art is that which is personal, Sonia King advised in her opening lecture. The more of ourselves we put into our art, the more original it becomes. I can honestly say that I have never been as 'up close and personal' with my mosaic art as during this course.
Read MoreKate Kerrigan on Working From Photography
Mosaic artists and teachers everywhere these days are turning to photography as a starting point for mosaic composition. Whereas a drawing was once the beginning point, representational mosaic artists increasingly use the digital information of a photo to make decisions about color, tone, perspective, and scale.
Kate Kerrigan links the two mediums in a direct way, having been a photographer before she studied traditional mosaic methods and materials in Italy. In the mosaic world she has inhabited for the past 17 years, she is known for precise yet moody urban landscapes, full of architectural details, pavement and shadows. Since her move to Lake Tahoe about four years ago, she has brought the same attention to compositions with mountains, lakes and trees, always focused on representations of the light.
At the Contemporary Mosaic Art Summit in Ashland earlier this month I had a chance to chat with her about the growth of the photographic trend, which is noticeable despite the concurrent favor enjoyed by abstract mosaics at the other end of the compositional spectrum.
Surprisingly, she was not fully aware of the number of artists today who build their mosaics literally on top of a posterized photocopy of a selected photo. Some instructors teach this method for classes in mosaic portraiture, for example. Because the end result utterly transforms the photo image, while creating an amazing similitude, they are not concerned with such issues as photographic copyright or the originality of the chosen photo.
Kate, on the other hand, only uses her own photographs in her work, and in fact states that she really can not or wouldn’t want to use photos taken by anyone else.
“My inspiration to create stems from what I see every day,” she has written. “I love composition and am constantly framing my surroundings. Through photography, I am able to capture it, the light, the moment, the perspective. Through mosaic, I am able to take what I see one step further and interpret it.”
Thus the initial view -- that which causes her to snap the shutter -- is the starting point of both the photo and the mosaic, if she chooses to make one.
“I think art starts with an original idea and requires the skill and technique to then execute it. The meaning is in the origin...the idea or concept. If I were to use someone else’s image, I am not producing art, I am simply replicating,“ she said.
In other words, both the composition and her emotional response to it are embedded in the original image and remain to be developed in the second medium.
“As an artist who works from my own photography, I don't strive for photo realism," she says.
"I take the concept/idea from my photographic compositions and then interpret it through stone or smalti. I either free hand draw it or loosely trace it, leaving all of the color choice, detail and execution up to me,” she told me. “It leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I love the texture and beautiful qualities that the art of mosaic brings to the piece. The mosaic is not a copy of the photo but rather becomes its own thing.”
Here are some examples of the transformation that occurs from one medium to the other, in Kerrigan's own work:
The photo:
"A Walk in the Rain" by Kate Kerrigan
The mosaic:
"This was my first mosaic based on one of my photographs. It was challenging to keep straight lines and perspective."
The photo:
"Rainy Day, Central Park" by Kate Kerrigan
The mosaic:
"This piece is all about the light, both as the focal point that draws you in,as well as the reflection on the wet pavement. My favorite photograph and mosaic to date!"
The photo:
"February Morning, Paris" by Kate Kerrigan
The mosaic:
"The cobblestone pavement was the most time consuming, but totally makes this piece and was worth the effort. I also love the shadows cast from the morning light on a cold winters' day that give this piece depth. "