Margaret Almon Mosaics

Terry Tempest Williams: A Mosaic is a Conversation between what is Broken

When I found out that Terry Tempest Williams had written a book on mosaic, I anticipated the loveliness of a fluid writer approaching one of my favorite subjects, but I was still awed by how wonderfully she captures mosaic as an art form, and as a way to find beauty in a broken world.  She begins with a quote, "The very language of tesserae tells us that this harmony is only achievable through the breaking and then rediscovery of the mosaic fragments" Natascia Festa, Nittola.  Then she wrote a kind of poetry:

A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.

A mosaic is a conversation that takes place on surfaces.

A mosaic is a conversation with light, with color, with form.

A mosaic is a conversation with time.

Tempest Williams immerses herself in mosaic, using her eyes and hands to fully experience the process, which then she expresses in her insightful words.  I wrote poetry for many years, and to hear Williams bridging the distance between my love of words and my love of mosaic, is like a homecoming.  She describes a conversation with one of her teachers, Marco De Luca:

De Luca explains the method.  Our eyes are convex, not flat, so curved surfaces like the niche in a church provide a "place to rest our eyes."  He pauses, "I call this an embrace.  In mosaics, it is in the curve that light is reflected--for me, this translates into a spiritual space."

See an object is really about listening.  He cradles his hands close to his mouth to explain.  Art, by its nature, is expressive and creates this emotional reaction in the public.  When my eyes are turned outward and inward at the same time, this is where I find my depth.(emphasis mine)

The public is used to figurative mosaics, representational mosaics, mosaics as paintings.  He shakes his head.  "I wanted to find the essential features of mosaic.  I wanted to express my language of desire, making use of tesserae to express my emotions."

I am interested in now in what my eyes can see, what my fingers can touch, what my hand can know by moving slowly across flesh, or fur, or feathers, or stone.  I trust what I see.  The surface of things is what we see.  I trust what I touch.  The surface of things is what we touch.

After learning about mosaics in Italy with teachers such as Luciana Notturni,Tempest Williams goes on to experience the mosaic transformations of Lily Yeh and the villagers in Rwanda she worked with to build a memorial at a mass grave in 2003. Lily Yeh started to work with the power of public art in 1986 Philadelphia!  She brought together residents of  neighborhoods in North Philadelphia to transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings with mosaic and painting, often transforming the lives of the residents as well, with the Village of the Arts and Humanities.

Beauty...comes to us with no work of our own; then leaves us prepared to undergo great labor. 

Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just.  

Tempest Williams includes the above quotation from Scarry, and encourages us to take courage in beauty, to turn inward and outward at the same time.

Simon Rodia and Watts Towers: An Urgent Need for Expression

Stratoz and I recently discovered Retro TV which we can magically receive due to a cheap digital converter box and rabbit ears from Radio Shack(yes, we are very high tech!)  Dragnet was unknown to me as a child, but is a regular on Retro TV and yesterday I was watching the odd intro where Joe Friday advertises some attraction of Los Angeles in his deadpan voice, and the attraction turned out to be Watts Towers.  Mosaics on Dragnet!  With Friday's emphasis that the Towers survived the Watts Riots of 1965.

I'd heard of the Watts Towers but did not realize how tall they are, with some approaching 99 feet, and that Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant, created them by himself with only a few hand tools, over a period of 30 years, starting in the 1920's.  He collected broken bottles and china and anything else he could find to mosaic the structures composed of metal pipe. 

I can't imagine what it was like to live in Watts with this tower slowly growing toward the sky and then literally towering over the neighborhood.  It's like living in the shadow of a mountain, part of the landscape but wondrously bizarre. 

I found a video of a 1957 documentary called The Towers, by William Hale,  which is a fascinating look at Rodia at work.  The narrator cites Rodia's "urgent need for expression," which captures the intense drive he had to build something big.  It reminds of Philadelphia's Isaiah Zagar and his Magic Gardens, how someone collects castoffs, scraps, all that is unwanted, and turns it into expression, into art, or in some cases, orders for demolition, followed by rescue and a flow of people wanting to come and see.

 

Related Posts:
In a Dream

The Magic Garden of Philadelphia:  Mosaic Immersion with Isaiah Zagar

Jeanne Reynal: Abstract Expressionist Mosaic Artist

I admit that my heart beat a bit faster when I saw reference to mosaic artist Jeanne Reynal(1903-1983) at the Arshile Gorky Exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum.  It was exciting to read about a mosaicist in context, a friend of Gorky's wife Agnes, a collector of both Gorky and Rothko's work, and a part of a period of art making called abstract expressionism.  In fact, Reynal is known more as a collector than as an artist in her own right, according to Elaine de Kooning, and several of the pieces in the Gorky exhibit were originally in Reynal's collection.  I was interested to discover that Reynal used a "direct" or "action" method of mosaicing, placing the bits of glass or stone directly into a bed of mortar, akin to Jackson Pollack drizzling and dripping paint onto his canvasbut not exactly.  The Webb Gallery which offers the Evening Sonata mosaic, quotes Reynal as saying "The medium of mosaic is not painting with stones, and not sculpture, but an art essential quality of which is luminosity."

The Anita Shapolsky Gallery recently had an exhibit, Art Couple: Work of the 1950's, with mosaics by Jeanne Reynal and paintings by her husband Thomas Sills.  The description of the show mentions that Sills was inspired by his wife's collection of abstract expressionist art, and reminds me of how contemplating art by others is a form of sustenance for many artists, collecting being a kind of art in and of itself. 

 

A few years ago, I went on a retreat at the Jesuit Spiritual Center is Wernersville, PA.  This is where I first witnessed Hildreth Meiere's mosaics in the chapel, and felt a longing to make such a thing.  I also remember walking the halls, unable to sleep, and coming across a print of a Mark Rothko painting, in dark blue, deeply still yet vibrant.  I suddenly felt at home, at peace. 

Abstract expressionism is an awkward term, but I do understand that expression can come through color and form, simple bars of paint.  The word "abstract" comes from the Latin abstractus, meaning "drawn away," separated from practical matters or material objects.  But it also has the connotation of "a smaller quantity containing the virtue or power of a greater" like an abstract of an article, the essential points summarized.  I come away from art like Rothko's or Reynal's with a sense of witnessing something essential.

Arshile Gorky in Philadelphia: Get there by January 10th, 2010

Stratoz and I greeted the New Year by going to see the Arshile Gorky Exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Museum.  I was moved by the persistence of Gorky's life, beginning with his childhood in Armenia and witnessing the massacres by Turkish forces, his mother dying in his arms out of starvation, fleeing to the United States and painting, painting, painting.  His two portraits of himself with his mother were intensely somberly sorrowful.  Art critic Ed Voves in an intriguing article points to the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Icon image of "The Mother of God who Shows the Way," Theotokos Hodegetria.  Gorky's icon of mother and son is heartbreaking as Arshile stands leaning toward his mother, as close as he can get without actually touching her.  

Gorky had a circle of friends including Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in New York at the beginning of the Abstract Expressionisim.  One artist mentioned on a title card was the mosaicist Jeanne Reynal, which of course caught my attention.  I will have to find more about her.

Walking through the gallery, in a giant circuit, we followed Gorky from his first studies of Cezanne, his trying on different styles like garments, and finally emerging as himself, full of emotional power, and yet plagued by depression.  Stratoz and I were both sobered by the end of the exhibition, with Gorky's struggle with cancer, his studio burning, and the painting that emerged, Charred Beloved, breaking his neck in a car accident, and finally committing suicide.  At the same time I felt gratitude that he did find something he loved doing in this life, that somehow he created in the midst of destruction. He died very near my age, a relatively young man who had lived several lifetimes of suffering.  

The exhibit is at the Philadelphia Art Museum until January 10th, 2010.  Go see it if you can.  And while you there, be sure to check out the Wrought and Crafted: Jewelry and Metalwork 1900-present.

I was fortunate to find photos by Roberta Fallon from the Gorky exhibit, and to learn about her groundbreaking artblog .  So many cool arts happenings in Philadelphia!

Related post:

Stratoz on the Gorky evening.

Clare Booth Luce and the Healing Work of Mosaic

There's something about mosaics that draws people.  I came across these photos of mosaics made by the playwright(among other things, including Congresswoman) Clare Booth Luce, which she gave to Frank Lloyd Wright at his Arizona home Taliesin West.

I know Luce's name because of a play she wrote, The Women, which was also made into a movie.  Intrigued , I discovered that Luce was introduced to mosaic by Louisa Jenkins, a mosaic artist from Big Sur California.  Luce's daughter Ann, a student at Stanford, died in a car accident at 19.  In her grief, Luce converted to Catholicism and commissioned artists to design a chapel in Ann's memory at Stanford.  Louisa Jenkins created the mosaic altar at St. Ann's chapel, a Madonna with rosary.  Jenkins was drawn to sacred art, and did many works for churches.  I was sad that photos of Jenkins work on the web are almost non-existent

Through the wonders of interlibrary loan, I checked out Jenkin's book on The Art of Making Mosaics from 1957.  Her daughter Barbara Mills was a co-author, and together they have many observations that rang true.

"Any artist who has watched adults as well as children enter a studio where tables are spread with multi-colored trays of stone and glass can testify to the attraction of these materials.  Baubles of glass, clinking stones, and bits of bright crystal seem to fill a hunger in people.  To handle them is happiness."

Perhaps handling these stones and glass gave Clare Booth Luce some happiness after the death of her daughter. 

Emile Norman: Endomosaics and a Life by His Own Design

I read today that Emile Norman, mosaic artist, died on September 24, 2009 at age 91.  I was not familiar with his work, but was intrigued to read about his "endomosaics."  Endo means "inside" and that's exactly what his mosaics were about, a technique he developed making store displays in New York City.    He took fragments of stained glass, shells, plant matter, stones, and for this window from the Nob Hill Masonic Temple, soil from all the counties in California(sent to him by Masons!) and Islands of Hawaii, and sandwiched them between two layers of methyl methacrylate(plastic to non-chemists). 

Norman was commissioned by the Masons to make this mosaic in 1958, and he worked on it for almost 2 years, with his life partner Brooks Clement.  I admire his creative energy, his improvisational spirit, as if he were a geological force, creating sedimentary rock.  Conservators at the Architectural Resources Group recently started restoring Norman's mural.  Plastic was exciting technology in 1958, and all the preservation implications not understood, but the Masons had the savvy to ask him to write down all his construction materials and methods and they kept the notes in the Temple's safe.  

Emile Norman lived in Big Sur, and his neighbors Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry produced a PBS documentary on his life, Emile Norman:  By His Own Design.  This is a courageous way to live, by your own vision and design.

Embrace: The Glass Sculpture of Christopher Ries

This photo of Christopher Ries' glass sculpture, Embrace, seemed fitting in light of the work of Etsy Project Embrace. Stratoz and I went to Guiding Light,  the Ries exhibit at MIsericordia University, and were awed by the collection of work.  Stratoz took many photos, in hopes of capturing something of the essence of these sculptures.  This is a three dimensional experience, which if you are anywhere near Dallas, PA, you need to go see this exhibit.  Each piece offerd up a multiplicity of reflections and angles as I circled around each one, and created a meditative state of discovery and delight.  As the gallery director, Brian J. Benedetti writes in the program, "Christopher Ries is fundamentally a sculptor of light."  Embrace is imbued with vibrant orange, but thrown magically from the base of the piece, to inhabit the clear crystal tip. 

Here I am next to Peace, a glowing whale's tail on the waves, or as it now occurs to me, a white dove, in glass tourist glory.   Tourists have their photos taken by monuments, often memorializing the war dead, so it is a relief to find a monument to peace instead. I will close with an excerpt from a poem called Sea of Glass, which  I wrote about the first time I saw Ries' work, in 1996.

"Ries presses his chest into the machine

he has made, polishing the opaque glass,

not knowing the inside

until it is finished.

The glass sculpted like praying, leaning on the heart

to change its inner shape."

--Margaret Almon

Related Posts:

Etsy Project Embrace 

My First Poetry Reading in a Long TIme

Christopher RIes and a Sea of Glass

The Ignatian Spirit and the Mosaics of Hildreth Meiere

Stratoz returned this week from an 8 day silent retreat at the Wernersville Jesuit Spiritual Center and I was very happy to see him!  Wernersville has a special place in my heart, as it was there 10 years ago, at a retreat on spirituality and collage, that I first saw a mosaic "in person" and a spectacular one made with Italian gold smalti, and designed by Hildreth Meiere. 

Meiere(1890-1961) was an art deco muralist and mosaicist, and had many commissions for public art, and in 1956 was the first woman to win the Fine Arts Medal from the American Institute of Architects. 

Through my Nutmeg Designs etsy shop, a relative of HM contacted me, because I mentioned she was a favorite.  It was a thrill when he bought one of my mosaic picture frames for a vintage photo of Hildreth Meiere.  Keith Meiere has a great site cataloging many of Hildreth's commissions. Keith also makes rosaries which can see on his site Twilight Rosaries. 

The frame was one of the first projects I did with gold smalti, in this case red gold in the center and the corners.  Orsoni Smalti Factory has discontinued the red smalti in the U.S. which set me pining, because it is such an intense glowing red.

Stratoz always comes back refreshed from his retreats.  I won't be signing up for a silent retreat anytime soon, but I would go back to Wernersville to sit in the chapel and soak in the mosaics.

William Morris: Pleasure in the Craft

I started reading Ray Watkinson's book on William Morris as designer, and discovered that of the many crafts he participated in with his firm, one was stained glass. Morris emphasized the mosaic- like patterning in glass, with bold lead lines, and wanted to take advantage of the transparency of glass to make colors brilliant.  

This stained glass window at All Saints Church in Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire UK, of Christ in the carpenter's shop, suddenly made me think of Christ as craftsmen, maker of things with his hands. I'm really taken with this image, and the idea of creativity as part of spiritual life.

I found Morris' desire to find pleasure in work to be very appealing.  I like to think that those who were employed in his workshop enjoyed what their craft.  Morris was a renaissance craftsmen, becoming a master of embroidery, weaving tapestry, designing wallpaper, and writing and designing books. Check out this cool sampling of Morris crafts at Art Passions.  

I was curious if Morris had anything to say about mosaics, and found this quote from his book, Hopes and Fears for Art:  

You may hang your walls with tapestry instead of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic; or have them frescoed by a great painter: all this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule:

Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful

or believe to be beautiful.

I'd read that ending quote before, but didn't know the context. Actually, Morris had his golden rule in all caps!   This is a challenging idea, that tapestry or mosaic is not a luxury, if done for beauty's sake.  I was at the Lansdale Arts Day yesterday, and saw my friend artist Sally Neiderhiser(as soon as her site is up, I'll put in a link), and we talked about the thrill of someone buying a piece of art because it speaks to them.  I believe beauty is a need, a nourishment for the soul.  

My first poetry reading in a long time! Tonight at Churchill's in Pottstown

Tonight, July 11th, I will be getting the poems out and giving a reading. 

Here's an excerpt of a poem I wrote about glass, which I mentioned in my post about Christopher Ries.  As you can see, glass has been on my mind for awhile!

Sea of Glass

an excerpt on Dale Chihuly's Seaforms:

"They are like chiffon woven with ribbon,
they still look warm, as if the blower's breath
gave the heat rather than the fire.
Some have lip wraps, an edge of color
named a lip.  These forms are open,
lips are the boundary;
a mouth that can say anything."

Come out and hear the rest!

Mad Poets Society presents a series of the previous Poet Laureates of Montgomery County, 2nd Saturdays at 7:00, at Churchill's in Pottstown. I was Poet Laureate in 2000, and I'll be reading with Sorina Higgins. I've heard they also sell chocolates!

http://churchillinc.net/otherwisepoetry.htm

Date:  Saturday, July 11, 2009
Time:  7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: 

Churchill Inc.

137 High St.

Pottstown, PA

Phone:	484-941-5100
Email:	pez349@msn.com, Glenn McLaughlin