Pont de Grenelle (Grenelle Bridge)(1959). Design by Louis Gilis; technique invented by artist Jean Crotti (1870-1958); panel assembled by “gemmists” in the Paris studio of Roger Malherbe-Navarre called Les Gemmaux de France. Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
This piece caught my eye at the Corning Museum of Glass. It was mounted in front of a lightbox and the colors of glass emerged in glowing layers. Before I started making mosaics, I made collages with magazine paper and the Gemmail technique is like having those scraps of paper turn to glass. Artist Jean Crotti wanted to incorporate light into his paintings in a new way and began working with thin glass glued and then fused, and called it Gemmail from combining the French words for gem and enamel(Gemmaux in the plural).
Crotti sought advice on the logistics of his technique with his neighbors, the Malherbe-Navarre family, physicists studying light and fluorescence. Eventually Roger Malherbe-Navarre became the primary maker of Gemmail, and artists like Braque and Picasso were enchanted, and wanted to translate their paintings into glass and light.
A reviewer of a set of Gemmail windows, Winefride Wilson from a 1964 issue of Tablet, was ambivalent, torn between the wonder of the effect and concern that it reminded her of childhood kaleidoscopes, and hard to take seriously. I have no such reservations ~ I am on the side of wonder.
Jean Crotti and Georges Braque, ca. 1956 / Guy Suignard, photographer. Jean Crotti papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Tangerine Orange Mosaic Mirror by Margaret Almon, glass tile, stained glass, gold smalti and dichroic on wood, 10×10 inches.
With my square mirrors, I imagine I am walking the middle path; I am centered between my edges. Establishing the edge provides security that it will all fit. If I let the glue dry before moving onward, then I don’t have to worry about nudging a piece out of alignment. With this one, I chose the outer tiles first, with their creamy tangerine smoothness. They are made from recycled broken bottles and windshields. They are orange, through and through. Then the innermost tiles, smalto from Italy, with a creamsicle swirl. Then I anchor the corners before traveling that middle path, less orderly than the edges, but still more linear than some of my other work.
When I first took a mosaic class and began a project making coasters, I started in the middle and didn’t give myself enough room for the edges. Not every project requires an edge or an anchor, but I am grateful for learning when to make it easier on myself. This happens in my life as well as in my art.
For the third year, Stratoz and I are doing the January Cure at Apartment Therapy, a kind of Spring Cleaning in the winter time. My favorite task is buying flowers. It had never occurred to me to buy flowers when there were none in the garden, and the infusion of color does me good in the bleak midwinter. The less favored tasks include cleaning out the fridge and the pantry. I found a 10 year old jar of turmeric, which in its brilliance still glows yellow-orange. It’s not that we’ve neglected to use turmeric, but that it was a large bottle, and we’ve depleted it slowly, half a teaspoon at a time. It has become a resident of the house, living here almost as long as we have. I suspect a new bottle will knock us over with its hue.
Orange Stained Glass Star by Staci Klemmer. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
A surprise gift for me from Staci Klemmer, client and friend ~ a stained glass star, in orange of course! I hung it from the Wall of Lights, which keep me infused with color during the long winter months.
Staci used to live around the corner from us, and we discovered she is a colleague in stained glass with Stratoz. They worked together to create a cross for their church. Stratoz designed it, and Staci made it so.
Cross for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Lansdale. Designed by Wayne Stratz and Realized by Staci Klemmer.
Random Acts of Piecing by BJ Titus. Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, 2014. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
B.J. Titus started with one triangle and then randomly chose pieces from her stash of fabric scraps, and the quilt began to take on a life of its own. Random Acts of Piecing is akin to Random Acts of Kindness. Both are about mending and transforming fragments.
Sunflower Mandala Mosaic by Margaret Almon and the Grout Monster
The Grout Monster came over before our open studio. She grouted pendants, picture frames and a house number with ease. Then came the sunflower. The GM removed the painter’s tape after grouting, revealing a berm around the edge. One petal reached past the others and broke through the berm, and she had the inspiration to begin carving the still malleable grout with a blade, tracing all the contours.
She thanked me when she was done. She had found it meditative. She asked me what mandala meant. It is a sacred circle.
Her stepfather had died that week, and she told me about asking the funeral director to put the chairs in a circle. This was the one thing she wanted, that her family could see each other and tell stories about her stepfather.
In her grief, she created intricate beauty, both in the honoring of her stepfather, and in delicately outlined petals.
Sunflower Mandala Mosaic by Margaret Almon and the Grout Monster
Strawflower: Hope in Orange. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
This last strawflower in our garden caught my eye, as autumn fades, a beacon of hope in orange. My heart feels brittle like the dead leaves, with the grief of this world. To notice remnants of beauty is a hopeful act. To offer my sliver of beauty from my studio is what I will do right now, even as I continue to pay attention to the grief, to notice what I see and what I don’t see. Muriel Rukeyser’s poem the Ballad of Orange and Grape stays with me:
Ballad of Orange and Grape
After you finish your work
after you do your day
after you’ve read your reading
after you’ve written your say –
you go down the street to the hot dog stand,
one block down and accross the way.
On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth
century.
Most of the windows are boarded up,
the rats run out of a sack –
sticking out of the crummy garage
one shiny long Cadillac;
at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,
a man who’d like to break your back.
But here’s a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose
and pink, too.
Frankfurters frankfurters sizzle on the steel
where the hot-dog-man leans –
nothing else on the counter
but the usual two machines,
the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,
I face him in between.
A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on
walking.
I watch the man as he stands and pours
in the familiar shape
bright purple in the one marked ORANGE
orange in the one marked GRAPE,
the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE
and orange drink in the GRAPE.
Just the one word large and clear, unmistakeable, on each
machine.
I ask him : How can we go on reading
and make sense out of what we read? –
How can they write and believe what they’re writing,
the young ones across the street,
while you go on pouring grape in ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE –?
(How are we going to believe what we read and we write
and we hear and we say and we do?)
He looks at the two machines and he smiles
and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.
It could be violence and nonviolence
it could be white and black women and men
it could be war and peace or any
binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.
Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don’t
do.
On a corner in East Harlem
garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,
forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,
misery, withered hope,
a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE,
pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.
Perfume Bottle Bouchon Mures (Berry Stopper), 1920, Rene Lalique. Corning Museum of Glass. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Lalique takes the form of a bottle stopper and lets it unfurl into branches heavy with fruit. I imagine the rounded topography of the berries, the bead-like drupelets. I wondered if there was an ombre berry like the ones in Lalique’s imagination, and found salmonberries. Sometimes when I eat raw berries my lips swell like drupelets, but in cooked in a pie I am ready to take them on.
Brilliant Rust by Steve Tobin’s Sketch Pile, Quakertown, PA. Photo by Margaret Almon.
When the Michener Museum offered a tour of artist Steve Tobin’s studio, I signed up. He’s in a warehouse in a Quakertown, PA industrial park. After walking through the inside, and being surrounded by manifestations of Tobin’s creativity on a colossal scale, we went outside into the sunshine and toward the Sketch Pile. The rust on the piece above was intense.
X Marks the Spot at Steve Tobin’s Studio, Quakertown, PA. Photo by Margaret Almon
Shadow play was spot on.
Shoe Selfie with Steve Tobin Sculpture in Orange. Photo by Margaret Almon.
Orange!
Wall of Bronze Pizza Sculpture by Steve Tobin. Photo by Margaret Almon.
Right before we got to the exit, there was a hallway of cast bronze pizzas, which suddenly reminded me of the Karlton Cafe in Quakertown, which has some of these on the wall. Tobin said he finds food inspiring. Stratoz is up to 60 guests that he’s made pizza for in 2014, and that has been a pleasure to get to know people white eating homemade pizza.
Steve Tobin Sculpture in Front of Avery Dennison, Quakertown, PA. Photo by Margaret Almon
Across the street from the studio is another sculpture in front of Avery Dennison. If you have ever used a label, you’ve probably encountered Avery. The clip logo was designed by Saul Bass in 1975 for Avery, and it looks good with Tobin orange.
House Number 340 in Red Orange with Blue Accents by Nutmeg Designs
I spend time immersed in numbers, in their shapes, and how straight and curved connect with each other. Each house number takes on its own personality, as I wend my way around them. This 340 reminded me that I also spend this time immersed in color, contrast, line, all elements of composition. Learning about composition was exciting, a new language. The people who commission house numbers from Nutmeg Designs understand this language, whether explicitly or implicitly.
Abstract art allows composition to speak freely, and it is a joy to spend time with each number imagining what will make it glow or pop or infuse a house with color.
