There are some advantages to having a public library with an older collection.  I came across this gem, complete with the cellophane-like cover protector, and had to check it out.  Franklin Gottshall was a prolific writer of books on woodworking and reproducing period furniture, teaching at industrial art programs.  I couldn’t find much biography, but he is mentioned in Raymond McInnis’ fabulous online history of woodworking.  Gotshall distilled his design ideas into this book in 1940.  It is exciting to read the articulation of concepts that I sensed intuitively but wasn’t able to name.  The most intriguing was the chapter on the curved line.

Gottshall’s Rule 47, “A beautiful curve should have no straight line in its entire composition.”  At first this seemed redundant–yeah, it’s a curve, not a straight line. . .but when making swirls in mosaic, there is a tendency to get on a straightaway before you even realize it.

Thanks to Gottshall I now know that one of my favorite designs is called a “reverse curve” and Rule 48 “The reverse curve is always most beautiful if it curls more quickly on one bend than on another.”  So rather than a perfectly symmetrical “S” shape, there is a gentle beginning and a rather cat tail-like curling in on the other end.  It’s probably the librarian in me that enjoys this classification aspect, but becoming aware of the different design tools in making a craft ultimately enriches the creative process.

I was deep into the reverse curves with this mirror, shown here courtesy of Stratoz.  A  2-foot by 2-foot frame is a lot of surface area to cover in curves!  After awhile my head felt kind of swirly as well.  Through Gottshall I also discovered that one of my favorite shapes is called a “volute.”  And one of the volutes in this world is the nautilus shell, which inspired a mosaic mandala.  I am currently working on another nautilus commission, and enjoying the unfolding.

My first summer in the studio was a revelation when I looked out the window, and was greeted by the garden. Stratoz is out there right now, attending to the plants.  My contribution consists of going to nurseries to choose plants, pulling weeds and being appreciative.  Every year we’ve added a few more perennials, and to witness their return the following spring is exciting.  A garden is like a mosaic, with all the individual pieces essential to the nature of gardens, giving the eye much delight, as they combine together into the whole.

Beauty, delight, joy.  These attributes are what I want to cultivate in my life and my art.  Flowers are compelling inspirations with their intense color, and texture from velvet to satin, iridescent or sparkly.  My mandalas originate in flowers, and to have my studio as a window onto the world of flowers is more than I ever expected to have.

NOTE: I’ve started taking a photo from the window of my studio weekly and posting it to the Nutmeg Designs Instagram. Watch the Garden of Nutmeg Designs evolve.

A friend took me to see In a Dream at the Ambler Theater, a documentary about Philadelphia mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, made by his son Jeremiah.  Like this photo I took at the Magic Gardens, this film is an intimate experience.  Jeremiah Zagar started filming his father at his mother’s request, and out of over 200 hours of tape, a powerful mosaic of intense emotion and creativity emerges.  I was moved by an interview with the filmaker, where he describes filming a scene of his family disintegrating in front of his eyes, and how filming was a way to cope, “It was the same when my father and me were in the country and he was talking about the time he tried to commit suicide. If I took the camera away it was impossible to handle that idea. The camera made it less emotional and much easier to deal with.”

Isaiah Zagar talks about a counselor at the hospital, after his attempt at suicide, who said he needed to work, to put one thing next to another.  This process of one piece building on the next, the focus, the obsession, led to a magic world of mosaics in Philadelphia’s South Street, more than 100 murals.  One thing next to another also led to Jeremiah Zagar’s poetic and painful  images on the screen.

Related Posts:

The Magic Garden of Philadelphia:  Mosaic Immersion with Isaiah Zagar

Tiffany Dream Garden Mosaic: A Philadelphia Treasure

Tiffany Dream Garden Mosaic:  Flower Detail

Phillies in Mosaic:  Jonathan Mandell

Iridescence and I go back a long way. When my family visited my grandparents in Texas, I was plunged into an alternate universe from my home in Canada, clearly signaled by the red plastic hummingbird feeders that my grandmother hung in the backyard. Filled with red sugar water, the mock flowers enticed the Ruby Throated hummingbirds, and I was transfixed by the iridescence at their throats.

I didn’t know it was called iridescence, of a surface taking on different hues from different angles, just that my eye went right to it. We didn’t have hummingbirds in Edmonton, but I did have a supply of eyeshadow, and was particularly taken with one that flicked between gold and green. Eyeshadow was as alluring as the hummer’s throat. I didn’t really understand makeup as a way to attract boys, but rather a palette of color and sparkle and transformation.

And now it appears that bees are drawn to floral iridescence, concentrated in the ultraviolet range, beyond what our human eyes can see. So not only do they see “bee purple” but in iridescent glory. Perhaps I was meant for iridescence, since my name “Margaret” means Pearl, and pearls have layers that refract light like tiny prisms, bringing forth all the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow does not have to be bright; it can be subtle like this shell swirl by honey 77.

The 25 Random Things Meme has been circulating, and I decided it would be fun to share one about my art:

1. In the first grade I wanted to be an artist, but in the third grade, the teacher’s idea of art was to trace things, and I wasn’t good at tracing and decided I couldn’t be an artist.
2. I took the bus to the Edmonton Art Musuem at age 14, and saw the block prints of Sybil Andrews and fell in love with the marks that wood cuts make.
3. The social studies teacher in Jr. High was also the art teacher, and I sat in social studies class, wishing I could make art, but never thinking I could.
4.  I taught myself to draw with Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and was amazed, because I always one of those “I can’t draw” people.
5. From the first time I saw a mosaic up close at the Wernersville Jesuit Retreat Center, by Hildreth Meiere, I knew I wanted to make them, but I lived in an apartment.  I made collages in the dining room, but bits of glass are different than bits of paper.
6. When we bought a house 5 years ago, I got a room all to myself as a studio.  I never had my own room before!
7. I love little tiny pieces of glass, and save off-cuts in candy tins, sorted by color.
8. My husband makes original stained glass and between the two of us, we can’t have bare feet in the house.  It’s hard at times to attribute the blame as to who tracked a glass fragment into the hallway, but we always try.
9. Orange is my favorite color, which surprises me, since I never liked in the past.
10. I took a workshop on Composition and Design with Nita Leland on Long Beach Island in NJ in 2004, and it was the first time I’d ever driven that far, or taken an overnight art class.  It was adventure!
11. I found a bowling ball at a yard sale in my neighborhood and brought it home to mosaic. Boy was it heavy walking those few blocks and then up the stairs to my studio.
12. I like making abstract pieces, or those inspired by patterns like fabric, flowers, paisley, quilts.
13. I spend far more time in hardware stores than I ever imagined–grout, glue, gloves.
14. I went to Snow Farm: The New England Craft Program, for a week long class on Mosaic making.  It was like a paradise summer camp for artists, with food cooked by a restaurant chef.
15. I love to go to quilt shows for inspiration.  People ask if I’m a quilter because I use quilt patterns in my work, and I tell them no, but my husband is!  That usually throws them.
16. My mother sent me some dishes that belonged to my great grandmother that had broken in transit, and I was thrilled to be able to transform the fragments into a whole.  I am named Margaret after my great grandmother.
17. Almost every window in our house has stained glass suncatchers made by my husband, and we also collect art tiles and paper cut art.
18. For my 40th birthday, I went to the Roycroft Inn, site of the original Roycrofters artisan guild, and took tours of Frank Lloyd Wright houses, and checked out the Louis Sullivan
19. architecture in Buffalo, NY, a true “art geek” birthday.
20. I live less than 1/2 hour from Henry Chapman Mercer’s Moravian Tileworks and his fabulous tile filled concrete castle of a house in Doylestown, Fonthill.
21. I keep my tesserae in deli containers, stacked in drawers of an Ikea closet organizer.  I call it my “tower of tesserae.”
22. I had to start selling my work, or there would’ve been mosaics up to the ceiling.
23. I tried many mediums before finding mosaic: ceramics, drawing, watercolor, collage, and an unforunate experience with cake decorating.
24. I had a 1st grade teacher who brought reproductions of art by the Canadian Group of Seven into the classroom, and I was fascinated by how different brushstrokes could make leaves or snow.
25. I order Weldbond Glue–a spage age adhesive and Canadian too!–by the gallon
26. I am incredibly blessed to be able to do something I love, and make art.

Related Posts:

Pilgrimage to Walls Speak:  The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meire

The Ignatian Spirit and the Mosaics of Hildreth Meiere

Weldbond:  A Mosaic Artist’s Friend

Quilts

LIFE magazine has posted an archive of millions of photos on Google Images, and of course I was searching “mosaic” and found a set of photos from 1955 of a woman making a mosaic coffee table, taken by Andreas Feininger. Idly searching on who Feininger was, I discovered he was a well-respected photographer, originally an architect from Germany, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1936, and started as a staff photographer for LIFE. He went on to write many textbooks of photography.

In an interview with Feininger and the ASMP in 1990 he said he was not a people photographer, and one of the few times he photographed a person, it was a mosaic(unnamed)artist, sort of the Donna Reed of the mosaic world. I can’t imagine mosaicking in bangle bracelets, and a flared skirt! I particularly like the can of “Miracle” cement. In other ways though, I feel a kinship with this anonymous woman, as she unpacks the box of tile sheets. And the close-up of her hands laying tile is even more familiar, with the timelessness of the human hand creating something.

There’s a quote in Feininger’s book, The Roots of Art: “Everything made by human hands, and most things conceived by the human mind, have their prototypes in nature.” Grouting is our way of making rocks or fossils–the latter being the sturdiest of mosaics! Conglomerate is a rock consisting of individual stones that have become cemented together with pressure and dissolved minerals.

I wonder who this woman was. Did she keep making mosaics? I am fascinated by the picture of her grouting with her bare hands(it appears she did take off the bangles). In case I didn’t mention it in my previous post, this is not recommended! Grout is very alkaline and leaches all the moisture from your skin, and can cause contact dermatitis with repeated exposure. Did she go on with her tin of Miracle, and keep creating with her hands?

When I first started making mosaics, I wanted to find others who made things. I went to some art leagues and art associations, and didn’t quite fit in because I didn’t do watercolor. At one meeting, a very nice gentlemen introduced himself and asked what I painted. Backs of mirror frames? Not the right kind of painting.

Then I remembered the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen. The state-wide organization has regional chapters. Montgomery county did not have a chapter but someone suggested the Bucks Chapter.

From the first meeting, I knew I had found my people. We start with a brief business meeting, then a break for snacks, and finally a presentation by a crafter on their art and process. There have been informative and fascinating presentations by an array of craftspeople such as Tony Williams‘ wood sculpture & functional art furniture and Joyce Inderbitzin with her stoneware & raku pottery.

My first big show was at Tyler State Park, Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen Fall Show 2007, with Pegge Shannon stained glass jewelry, Cynthia Prediger fine metalwork jewelry, Don McGrath pottery, Donna Franchi clay tiles, and the gorgeous weavings of Amy Turner.

The Bucks County Guild of Craftsmen meets the second Wednesday of the month at 7:30, in the Boy Scout Building, 1 Scout Way, Doylestown, PA(across from the Mercer Museum). There’s parking out front. Come in the main entrance and turn right, through the double doors into the Meeting Room. Hope to see you there!