Artist Watch: Laura Harris

Laura Harris of Melonhead Gallery, was first “introduced” to me by Carol Shelkin. An email from Carol, read, click and… POW! I was literally blown away. That hasn’t happened to me, to that extent,  in a long time. Her work is magnificent. To be perfectly honest I grapple for the words that describe how I feel when I view her work, and that is all in a photo on my trusty ol’ computer, so I can’t imagine what it would be like in person.  She is in my mind a Mythmaker, to borrow a term from the righteous James Hubbell.

Born in Wisconsin she is the daughter of late Midwest sculptor/painter, Walter Lenz.  Laura has been working in mixed media, including fiber art, acrylic art and mosaic art for over 25 years.  More recently, Laura has concentrated on mosaic portrait art.  Using a preferred direct method of application, her choice in tesserae include venetian and dichroic glass, 24 Kt. Italian gold smalti, porcelain, ceramic tile, mirror, stone and salvaged or recycled materials.

Laura’s career was not always limited to the field of art.  She worked as a speech-language pathologist for over 15 years and was recognized in 1998 as one of the top 5 teachers in Wisconsin for her efforts in the field of Assistive Technology and voted New Berlin Public School Teacher of the Year in 2001.

Laura got into mosaics in 1985 after having to quit teaching due to her worsening Multiple Sclerosis. She has risen above her physical limitations, as her artwork shows, but also in her attitude towards her MS: “I can’t feel all of my cuts so I guess there is a silver lining in everything, you just have to look for it.”

Her father has played a vital role in her life as she states: “I have been involved in art my whole life. My dad was an artist and a strong influence. I remember even as a young kid that my dad banned coloring books, he felt they were too restrictive and didn’t challenge the imagination. He also died from complications of MS in 2006.”

“Today, the world can appear fragmented and its people disconnected,  mosaics allow me to fuse the pieces  together to create something cohesive and beautiful , what I wish the world could be.”  –Laura Harris

The lovely Laura in the Cave of the Mounds on a family holiday, before exhibiting in Madison’s Art on the Square.

Artist Watch: Suzanne Steeves

I had originally meant to post this before SAMA and for some weird reason my email dumped Suzanne’s response to me in my spam… grrrr! So apologies to you Suzanne, for not having gotten this up sooner… *sigh*

Suzanne Steeves was born in New York to Canadian parents. She had a fabulous career in television overseeing the launch of a couple of specialty channels, running entertainment production, heading up sports. “Very rewarding and endlessly all-consuming.”  Suzanne met her ‘soul mate’ ten years ago –  husband Aiken. “We left our full time careers behind, and ran off to Bora Bora to get married.”

As a child, Suzanne was constantly drawing, painting and actually did her first mosaic at age ten. “It was a gift for my grandmother. A picture made from all different types of seeds: pumpkin, poppy, sesame etc. My grandmother kept it hanging on her wall until she left this world.”

After the demise of her first marriage, Suzanne became a single parent with a demanding career and had little time to pursue her passion – art. “I did paint, but sporadically. Now I am making up for lost time. Initially I picked up my paint brushes and went back to oils. I had always loved mosaic but had never really considered it … until one day I happened to see a used mannequin with a uniquely beautiful shape. I immediately envisioned Eden Rocks. The idea of telling the story of the Garden of Eden – on Eve herself…” Suzanne claims it to be a ridiculous choice for a first project (scoff!) but considers herself an over achiever. “After starting her I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I spent the next several months reading everything I could get my hands on. I completed her last year and haven’t looked back.”

When describing her love for the medium, Suzanne states: “I can’t begin to describe the pleasure I find in working in mosaics. I love everything about it. The possibilities are limitless. I would need dozens of lifetimes to even begin to tackle every project I have wandering around in my head! When I’m in the zone it is my meditation.”

Suzanne left the city behind and now lives with Aiken and their two dogs on 100 acres north of Toronto. She has two beautiful grown children, a son Stefan and daughter Sasha and a wonderful stepson, Taylor.

Eden Rocks

Polar Prayer

Bird in the  Hot Sun

The Wave

Finally meet Suzanne, pictured with her daughter…

Artist Watch: Francesca De Lorme

Things have been busy on my end and I’ve become somewhat slow in almost everything “extra-curricular”, though I daresay it’s only going to get worse as I delve into full time work 😦 I think that = Death to Mo! I certainly hope not, perhaps it will simply mean prioritising what I do work on…

Anyway, let’s get straight back into meeting fellow mosaic artists, shall we? Please meet Francesca De Lorme aka Studio Fresca on Flickr. Reading through her bio is like reading a fine novel! Not only can she make beautiful art, she can write – I daresay I think she can do everything 😉 Francesca only recently caught my eye and it was initially because of her really well thought out and articulate comments she left for others. Then when I clicked into her photostream… *sigh*!

Francesca comes from a family of several generations of scientists and teachers who have a strong appreciation of the arts and crafts, but who viewed these endeavours primarily as worthy hobbies and entertaining pastimes rather than as a career path — so of course she became a scientist and a teacher, and not an artist! She has always dabbled in arts and crafts — everything from metal work to fiber art, from ceramics to watercolours, from hot glass to mosaics. “Just prior to becoming enamoured with mosaics, I was learning the art of hot glass casting at Kauai Recycling for the Arts, where we melted down discarded glass bottles, windows and jars and turned them into functional and fine art items.”

Francesca’s introduction to mosaics was in her Kindergarten year in California – there was a large mosaic (floor to ceiling) on the wall in the front foyer of her school. It depicted a lovely traditional village scene and it greeted her every day when she went to school. “I loved that mosaic for its peaceful depiction of community, for all its hundreds of colorful, shiny tiles (like little treasures!) and because we were allowed to touch it as much and as often as we wished. I touched it lavishly and liberally every morning when I arrived at school and it seemed like all the magic that mosaic contained just flowed into me through my fingertips. It became my own special talisman and I have been in love with mosaics ever since.”

She has been making mosaics on a part-time basis for around 3 years. Her mosaics are one-of-a-kind and completely hand-made utilising both traditional, and modern tools, techniques and materials. She says of her style: “(It) is probably best described as “eclectic in the extreme”, which works for me given that I am using found objects and since I never know quite what I will find in the dumpsters, at the salvage yards or in the thrift stores, it is hard for me to develop a specific style.” Francesca focuses on creating mosaics that are functional as she believes that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy unique & beautiful objects in their homes, work places and communities. “It gives me great pleasure to think of someone not only looking at work I have created, but to consider that they might find it useful, too.”

Francesca has imposed upon herself a rule whereby she uses a minimum of 75% recycled, reused and salvaged materials in all her pieces. That’s a great rule!!! Maybe even something for the Mosaic Challenge Group someday…

“I sometimes wonder just why I happened to become so enamoured with mosaics because the truth is they are messy, difficult, time consuming, frustrating — and sometimes even painful — to make… But the absolute truth is that it is also exciting, fascinating, playful, absorbing, and infinitely rewarding, so regardless of the challenges involved, I absolutely love being a mosaicist because there are so many great things to love about this particular medium.”

She enjoys the connection to those artists who have gone before us as she uses her hands and simple cutting tools. She enjoys existing amongst fellow artisans. She enjoys the kinesthetic pleasure she gets from the solidity of the materials, the endless range of textures, the various options of opus patterns of the tesserae, and the three-dimensionality of many of the final pieces that just beg for a little tactile sensory input, in addition to all that visual: “There is something extra cool to me about an art form that encourages “touching” as well as looking.”

She enjoys playing with the positive and negative spaces: “The artistic concept of “positive/negative” space is particularly strong in mosaics and I like being able to incorporate it into my design to define shapes, lines and spaces, set an overall tone to the piece, or create a flow by using spaces that are bold, or subtle, or in juxtaposition with one another.”

Finally,  a big reason she finds mosaics so enjoyable is that they really require both left and right brain attention, as well as full body engagement, (involving heart, head and hands!): ” I am creating a vision I see in my head by physically shaping and fitting a variety of pieces together — sort of like a puzzle — in a form of visual problem solving. So, I get to create “art”, but I also get to play with all these fabulous puzzle pieces made of stone, tile, glass, rocks, metal and other wonderful materials that are shiny, glossy, rough, smooth and colorful…”

Francesca has had quite an assortment of careers in her lifetime. She started by studying Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara and worked with Radiation Analysis in the Environmental Sciences division at the infamous Livermore Lawrence Laboratory in California. Eventually Francesca ended up in teaching — including several rewarding and challenging years working with “juvenile delinquents”, which then led to counselling. From there she somehow found herself working in journalism, which was a natural segue into graphic design – she owned a small graphic design and communications company and still likes to take on part-time projects in graphic arts. “Now I’m studying for yet another career change (in health and patient advocacy) and hope to work with marginalized populations and community programs once I complete my research and clinical practice.” On top of all of this she is also working with her mother creating clothing from recycled materials and salvaged neckties. “I get to do the designing and she does some re-designing and the actual sewing.”

Francesca was born (literally and proverbially) with a restless heart. “I have a cardiac condition that causes frequent arrhythmia (which keeps life interesting…) and I have a need to go “walkabout” on a regular basis. Luckily I found, and have been married to my husband, Dave, (a long-board surfing air traffic controller who is perfectly happy living life as a nomad) for 30 years. We have been fortunate to travel in about 30 countries in those 30 years and we were blessed with a (now grown) daughter who has not one iota of interest in rambling around the world and is quite happy to be living on her own where she can stay put.” Funny how that happens 🙂

Depending on the year, the season, her school schedule, her husband’s job contracts, the weather, and their mood, they can be found living in their homestead in Vermont (which they designed and built themselves out of about 60% recycled materials), working on the island of Kauai (where Francesca can mosaic outdoors all year long!) or travelling around somewhere in the world where they can visit galleries, coffee shops and junk yards. However, she can most frequently be found under the influence of expensive tea and cheap chocolate!

You can check out more of her work and musings on her website.

A work in progress

One of Francesca’s current projects is a mural in the cafe of a high school in Vermont. Each student has a 1 foot square “canvas” (with a black tiled border) in which to create their own composition. I look forward to seeing this project evolve!

Finally meet Francesca, pictured with her husband and daughter:

Artist Watch: Linda Hooper

On to the next artist!! Meet Linda Hooper aka lyndalu_fla. I came across her lovely, lovely pots one day. They’re big and impressive! Then I noticed her mushrooms. Well… I have a bit of a thing for mushrooms so this was right up my alley and the tingles began! Here is her story…

Linda has been mosaicing for 4 years and believes that the wonderfully colourful mosaics in Mexico is what originally inspired her to start. Like most of us, she has always had her hand in something creative: sewing, crochet, cross stitch, decoupage, beaded jewellery, to name but a few. “Watching all the craft, gardening and home improvement shows on HGTV gave me the interest and the courage to try all types of things. I was inspired to take a Woodworking class and fell in love with working with wood – making all kinds of small decorative items, mainly with a scroll saw. I thought that was going to be my big passion, but then I got into mosaics, and discovered that THIS was definitely my big passion.”

Linda promptly read every mosaic book she could get her hands on at her local library, and then bought those she felt were valuable reference material. She realised that pique assiette was her “thang” and that it also gave her the excuse to peruse the thrift stores that much more. “I love the hunt and I love finding bargains. It’s really insane how much “stuff” I have collected for mosaics – both tesserae and substrates. My work area is in the garage, and my poor car no longer fits in there.”

I’m sitting here chuckling to myself while I write this just because I think at some point we all get taken aback by the hook! It’s quite a powerful sensation and the realisation that life has, from this moment on changed can be a little startling, as Linda mentions: “I still can’t believe how quickly mosaics became an obsession. I saw every object as something to mosaic, and even dreamed about mosaics! The first couple of years, I worked strictly with broken china, and then I started working with some vitreous tiles, and more recently have been working with stained glass and tempered glass.”

Her love is garden art and so everything she has created has been done for the garden. She has also been working with concrete, making or modifying bases for mosaic. Lucky Linda attended the SAMA conference earlier this year and took Sherri Warner Hunter‘s class – making lightweight mosaic bases out of polystyrene.

The sharing, camaraderie, support and inspiration she has received from Flickr pals and those from the Mosaic and Stained Glass Forum are an enjoyment to her and spur her on to keep creating! “What an amazing and talented group of people! I was so happy to discover that I was not alone in my obsession – and that I wasn’t crazy after all – or at least if I am, I’m in good company!!!!”. lol!!! 😉

Linda resides in Cape Coral, FL USA where she has lived for the last 8 years.

And finally meet the artist!

Artist Watch: Caroline Kovacs

Better known in the Mosaic World as Caz Kovacs, Caroline was born in Morwell VIC, Australia. A neighbouring town to Traralgon, where she currently resides. It is in the centre of a region of South Eastern Australia where there are rich brown coal deposits. This brown coal is the fuel for 90% of Victoria’s electricity needs.

As a child Caz always felt the need to create. She loved drawing, painting and making greeting cards. She crochets and embroiders and is also musical – having learnt to play the piano and sing.

After finishing high school she worked for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria for 10 years as a Mechanical Engineering Assistant. Her specialty was open cut mine performance statistics and she took great pride in her work.

Caz has been happily married to Atti for 22 years (you go girl!!!) and together they have two sons aged 14 and 11. When they embarked on their journey of starting a family, Caz left paid work and joined the unpaid work force commonly referred to as a Stay at Home Mum, or as I like to sometimes say, a Domestic Goddess – though there is very little Goddess-like about staying at home 😉

Caz has been mosaicing for just over two years now. Her studio is a large colourbond shed which is now officially called Caz’s Mosaic Studio. Atti made her a great, big work bench underneath a window that lets plenty of natural light in. After a family holiday to the lovely Merimbula – a seaside town on the Sapphire Coast of NSW – Caz made her first mosaic. “While doing some holiday shopping I came across a tile shop that had a large assortment of coloured glazed ceramic tiles on display out the front. I had been reading some Better Homes and Gardens magazines that had an article on mosaics in the garden. So with inspirations from the sea I bought some deep dark blue, turquoise, pale blue and pale sand coloured tiles, collected small pebbles and shells from the beach and returned home and made my first mosaic stepping stone.”

Her next project was a terracotta pot and then more stepping stones, as she found these were an excellent way to experiment with different designs and layouts. She has made many pots as presents for family and friends, but it is her neighbour (her biggest fan – though I’d argue her neighbour would be competing for that title) who has commissioned her to make several pots as gifts.

Caz continued on diving into the realm of wall art and power tools. Her first power tool was a gift from her husband – a wet saw. She scoured the library and the internet looking for inspiration and knowledge from people who shared a similar vision. “I no longer felt alone with this unusual hobby”.

Caz learnt the indirect method using fiberglass mesh and then made her first picture, Starry Night. “I had seen a newspaper booklet on famous artists and saw Vincent Van Gogh’s incredible painting and thought that I could duplicate those unique brush strokes with small pieces of tiles”.

Using a grid she enlarged the picture to roughly the same size as the original painting. “I had to work on the picture in four separate pieces for it to fit on my work bench. I used my new wet saw and cut out a variety of coloured rectangles before I started gluing. I love using mesh. It makes it so easy to make alterations and adjustments. The project quickly took shape as I spent ever free opportunity I had to work on it. I used a variety of different grouts and finished it off with a timber frame that Atti made out of leftover architrave.”

Her next satisfying project was her onion pot and pedestal. The main background tiles were salvaged bathroom tiles from Atti’s work. “I had the project nearly finished when I ran out of tiles. I was so disappointed because I couldn’t buy anymore, anywhere. To my delight Atti found a small box of leftover tiles in the back of an old store room. It was just enough to finish the project.”

Last summer she was commissioned to make a mosaic picture for an exterior wall. She made an Australian Floral picture but ended up  making it into a square shape as opposed to the rectangular specs provided by the client. So she kept that piece for herself and decided on Dutch Irises, inspired by the popularity of her pedestal, for the client.

I think it is safe to say that Caz is the Tile Flower Queen… she makes the most amazing flowers and has even photographed how she makes them. Click here to go to her online tutorial.

I look forward to hopefully meeting her when I travel down to VIC in a couple months time… I was there earlier this year and had no idea she lived as close as she does.

This reproduction of Klimt’s Kiss is gorgeous too… Not yet finished but I thought it was definitely worth posting…

And finally meet Caz and her hubby…

Artist Watch: Leena Nio

Leena Nio, aka neanio, has lived in Paris now for over 20 years. Whilst on holiday at her parent’s house in Finland 4 years ago she came across an article about French artist, Virginie Loy, teaching mosaic workshops in Finland. “Hmm, I thought, that’s something I could try- so as soon as I got back to Paris I bought a book on how to do mosaics.”

Ever since winning an art competition (with a picture very similar to her flower fields of today)and a trip to Canada at the tender age of 13, Leena has always loved the arts. She had a long period of making jewellery but felt she had gone as far as she could with her jewellery making. As it happens she lives a 10 minute walk away from one of the best mosaic supply stores in France… “They were very helpful in telling me how to use tools and about the materials. And of course every church and many houses or even streets in Paris have exemples of mosaics.”

After experimenting by herself for a couple of years with flower pots and trays etc, Leena felt she needed to learn new techniques, so again, right next door, she found a wonderful teacher called Claire Guerin, who won the biggest mosaic competition in France back in 2006. “From then on, I feel like I have been able to progress heaps. I can’t seem to stop making mosaics almost every day – that’s what I was warned about in my mosaics store – they said “ careful, once you start doing mosaics it becomes a passion”.”

Lately there has been a growing interest in her work both in France and in Finland. Her next exhibition will be in August and hopefully another in Paris either in October or in November. “I just finished an outside terrace which was a first for me, artistically it’s a success, as Claire would say, but evening up the surface is still difficult for me (all pieces were of different thicknesses).”

For the future, Leena hopes for an agent who could take care of selling her work and interfacing with clients so she could leave her day job and keep creating the images that invade her mind. 😉 Meanwhile, “I guess I just muddle along hoping my work gets somehow noticed for its quality and imagination.” Artists that inspire her include Sonia King, Irina Charny and Claire Guerin, but she admires any piece of work that comes from anybody as long as it’s got a play of colour and style that she relates to.

Finally meet Leena:

Artist Watch: Judit Bozsár

I’m trying to make a disconcerted effort to include artists from all over the world here and have noticed many of the artists featured so far are from the US. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… as Seinfeld might say 🙂 but in keeping with the effort of making this as international as I can, I introduce you to Dr Judit Bozsár who was born in Hodmezovasarhely, Hungary and now resides in Pilisvorosvar, just outside Budapest, Hungary. She is known as stiglice on Flickr, one of my preferred stomping grounds.

Now I know there is a very lively mosaic community in Hungary because I have had alot of hits from atleast one mosaic forum, and alas have not been able to understand a single word that is said. 😦 I still marvel at the fact that we English speaking countries have very often only the one language, whereas every single non-English speaking country that I have travelled to, bar one, had some English.

After being a slave her whole life to her watch, Judit retired as a research scientist of veterinary medicine back in May. Nowadays she enjoys “going to bed, getting up, eating, strolling in the garden, playing with mosaics, with my grandchildren, with my animals, etc. whenever I feel like doing so.” 🙂 I’ve always said I can’t wait to retire! lol…

Judit has been making mosaics now for 3 years and it has pretty much taken over her home as she states: “No room is singled out yet to be furnished as a workshop, so I am forced to litter the house with my treasure of half-made pieces, china and glass shards: cellar, garage, my former study, the guest room (the only one with an appropriately positioned window), wherever I can…”.

When I asked her if she had any advice on making mosaics, her response was first and foremost having a spouse who does not mind but does care. 😉 Acquire some very good tools, browse the internet, see as many mosaics as you can, find all the websites and blogs of as many artists as you can. Learn from everyone kind enough to share his/her knowledge – “and be as grateful to them as I am”. Have patience, do not feel you are wasting your time with more important tasks waiting … Do not let your failures disappoint you rather learn from them. Study the properties and descriptions of the used materials carefully, enabling your work to stand the test of time in both senses. Be courageous in your experiments, “except when you are working on a commission.” Food for thought and then some…

In recent years, her life has undergone many positive changes that she now feels there are too few hours in the day to do everything she is interested in. “At long last I can live in a large garden with as much domestic and wildlife around me as I like. I am enthralled with all forms of LIFE from those lovely spiders’ nets through the teeming plant life to the titmice brooding in their birdhouses … Since I was given my first digital camera, photography has also been a standard hobby.”

Judit’s first grandchild was born a year and a half ago and was followed by two more: “…they are opening up a new world for me, one very different from what I and my two sons used to live in”. Her other passions are reading and gardening, though these two suffer most since discovering mosaics.

Judit is self-taught and has learnt, and is still learning, everything through the web. She is ultimately very grateful to all those who have supported her in her newfound passion – her husband who encourages rather than sneers; to her Hungarian mosaic friends who introduced her to this medium and whose constructive criticism is a huge help; to her virtual friends at flickr who leave supportive comments; and last but not least “to those colleagues, friends and relatives who remember me whenever they break a plate or cup or renew their bathrooms and thus keep supplying me with much of my precious basic materials…”. 🙂

Judit’s website is still being constructed and you can also see her work on her flickr account.

Now for the nity gritty! You’ll see why I love her mosaics. She is one of the most versatile mosaic artists that I’ve come across…

Finally meet Judit…