Mosaic Series, "Exploration of the Grid"

This series came about for a few reasons: I taught a mosaic workshop at the Institute of Mosaic Art in Berkeley, CA  May 2 - 3, 2015, and as a way to introduce myself to potential students I offered to put together a body of smaller works to display in advance of the workshop. They needed to be a size that would be affordable  to ship, so I made them 12" or so square. I used this opportunity to work in a series. While I have created series before (To Every Thing There is a Season  and the Quilt Series) this is the first time the works evolved one at a time, each new piece some sort of extrapolation from the previous and made in a 6 week period. I really REALLY enjoyed the entire process and learned that I could be content being a fine artist, with all my artistic concentration on creating my own work. 

The series is called "Exploration of the Grid". The mosaics are roughly 10" x 10" on a handmade substrate of 12 1/2" square. The mesh is visible on the edges to add to the grid effect. I restricted materials to vitreous glass, stained glass, unglazed porcelain, broken pottery and contorno. Tessera size was 1/6 of a 3/4" square vitreous tile.  I used only small rectangles, (with the exception of 'Neutrals') and laid everything according to a grid until the 6th piece in the series where I wanted to stray from the horizontal/vertical layout. With each piece I had extra limitations and a new direction to take the theme. Also of note, these works, like all my mosaics, were done in the double reverse method on adhesive. This allowed for easily making changes in the works. As the series has continued, the sizes of the tesserae have become more varied.

Five of the original works were all SOLD at L'Attitude Gallery in Boston. Fractures, Spring Grid and Fault Line Fractures are still available.

'Because Green is my Favorite Color', first in the series, Exploration of the Grid SOLD

'Units of Two', abstract mosaic in blues and golds. My restriction was to always have 2 tessera adjacent to each other and only the 2 colors of gold and blue SOLD

'Neutrals', abstract mosaic in whites and greys. I love this palette. My intention was to have the dark contorno really make a separate statement from the rest of the tesserae SOLD

"Fall Colors". Tesserae are 'stacked', thus encouraging the eye to go up and down each column, though the color is laid so as to bring the eye across as well…I have used this andamento a lot since doing this piece, it is such a different way to lay tile. SOLD

'Blueberry Fields in Fall', abstract mosaic in reds. The inspiration for this mosaic was a photograph of the title subject. Colors are exquisite! SOLD

'Faultline Fractures', making more use of the spacing of rows of tesserae (I use the words 'tesserae' and 'tile' interchangeably.)

'Fractures' multi-colored abstract mosaic. Getting away from the linearity of the rest of the series.

'Spring Grid'. This mosaic went through a number of transformations. Originally my idea was to leave a lot more space within the grid, unfortunately not all ideas work out. My very artistic daughter made the comment, "it could use some pink", that gave it a new direction along with different colored ( shades of grey and tan) grouts. I really like this piece!

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'Complimentary Colors', SOLD at the Society of American Artists salon in Detroit, MI 2017 #9 in the series, the first time I used larger tesserae/stained glass pieces.

'Exploration of the Grid Meets Quilt Series' - while 'exploring' the grid format, I took into consideration how the Log Cabin motif is ripe for interesting possibilities in mosaic - one could riff of this in so many ways…this was a commission I designed specifically for a mosaic artist that is also a quilter.SOLD

'Exploration of the Grid #9', 2021 my focus in this was the limited palette and paying particular attention to the value of the tones.