High up in the mountains of Patagonia, Argentina, lives Griselda Mallozzi aka Blackberry Winter – Mosaics on Flickr. Her work is truly breathtaking. When I asked her if she’d mind me including her in this series, her response was one of humble decline. Can you believe that she thought her work was not yet good enough to be included?! She’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and I love her work. BamaSusanna I’ll have to include you in that humble decline too :) Still I convinced you both, just took a bit of nudging! ;)

A year ago, in February 2006 Griselda travelled to Buenos Aires, the closest large city in her area, to buy the wheeled nippers to cut vitreous glass. Her field of study and work has always been science (she’s in Biochemistry) and she has absolutely no art background. As a self taught mosaic artist, she found all the information she needed to start on the internet, through the mosaic groups on Yahoo and other mosaic members in the community.

Her first contact with mosaics as an art form was through travel. She has visited Italy, Turkey and Spain many times and was amazed to see that side of the world full or art and history. The mosaics from Istanbul, Venice, Barcelona, Rome and Pompei, in particular, caught her eye.

I remember her writing into the Mosaic Critics Group for the first time, a group Griselda mentions as being very grateful to for all the constructive criticism that comes from the group members. It’s always a difficult thing to do to put yourself out there, essentially, for criticism. The praise I suppose is also there, but as a self taught artist I know how difficult it can be. Griselda was always so open and so keen to learn. Her first mosaic to the group was amazing and I remember thinking to myself how well executed it was and that she really took on a difficult piece, as it depicted a river running under a bridge, so the perspective of the river flowing would have been a difficult thing to portray through mosaics. Moreso because she was doing it in the “grid” style, for all those in the know also called Opus Regulatum (yes I had to look that up and make sure!!! lol).

Since then she has really found her own very unique and recognisable style. What I particularly like about her pieces is the simplicity of it all and yet there is such an array of complexity at the same time! The detail in each piece is just spectacular. I always look forward to her posts and find myself needing a bit of time to take everything in.

As Griselda has said: “The reality is that every piece of mine you see is something I do to learn a new way to lay the tiles, of experiments with grout and so on…”

Well, her work is just gorgeous and I think they speak for themselves… She plans on exhibiting her work at the end of this year in her township in Argentina.

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daybreak originally uploaded by Blackberry Winter – Mosaics

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silence originally uploaded by Blackberry Winter – Mosaics

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moonlight originally uploaded by Blackberry Winter – Mosaics

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the minute after originally uploaded by Blackberry Winter – Mosaics

Last, but not least, a picture of the Artiste in question with Mrs Boots :)

Griselda Mallozi

You can find all of Griselda’s work on her blog: sevenlambs.blogspot.com and also on her Flickr site.