The idea
This post is an ode to Mexican smalti* and a lesson in taking chances. A few months ago I got a phone call from Alison MacCormaic. Alison is a mosaic artist based in Ireland who works almost exclusively with Mexican smalti.
She wanted to know if I would be interested in applying for a creative residency exchange. I would stay with her in rural Ireland and learn about using Mexican smalti. In return, she would come to Edinburgh to use marble (imported from Greece). For the last few days of the residency we would go to Venice together (plenty of smalti there, of course and Acquileia is nearby).
The residency, run by the World Crafts Council_Europe is open to artists working in European countries, which, thankfully, still includes the UK. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. Frankly, I probably would have crawled to Ireland for the opportunity to use Mexican smalti.
Mexican smalti
Mexican smalti is rarely used on this side of the Atlantic. It comes – no prizes for guessing – from Mexico so therefore the shipping and the taxes can make it prohibitively expensive. It’s like Italian smalti, the way a wild gentian is like a supermarket carnation. Yes, they are both flowers, but…With the Mexican variety, each piece of glass is variegated, giving the material an unusual depth and subtlety.
The effect is an extraordinary richness; colours which are impossibly pure and deep. While other materials wave discreetly from under their wide-brimmed hats, Mexican smalti puts on it’s high heels and struts its stuff. Added to that it is flattish and squarish and doesn’t have air bubbles. There’s lots to like.
The residency
The point of the residency is for each participant to live and work with the other. This is where the element of chance comes in. I follow Alison’s work and have a huge admiration for it but I had only met her once in person. We didn’t know each other. Would it work?
On day one we plunged right in. Or at least I tried to give the impression of doing so. It’s hard to use such beautiful materials with all their slippery illusiveness. Alison, who started her artistic life making stained glass, now creates large scale public art using Mexican smalti. She has total command of it, understanding its different registers the way a perfumier can break down a scent.
One wall of her converted cow-shed studio is devoted to her smalti collection. Shelves full of clear plastic boxes, carefully labelled and coordinated.
Working together
We worked together – Alison on a series of pieces for an upcoming exhibition while I tinkered, managing to produce two small mosaics, one a votive eye (below) for the same exhibition and then a simple mosaic based on a sprouted seed design to support Mosaics for Palestine. 
Maybe I was too excited to work properly. My slight reservation about spending so much time with someone I hardly knew had vanished in the car ride back from Galway to Alison’s house. There was so much to discuss. Mosaic techniques, methods, pricing, approaches, glues and teaching and design and, and, and…
The cat called Flan
I soaked up Alison’s world. The studio ten paces from the kitchen door; the wildflower meadow, the orange cat called Flann (which is short for orange in old Irish), the homemade pizza made by her husband, Eoghan, the colours and the flower beds and the washing line which Alison frequently ran to and from with piles of laundry as the rain pelted then lifted.
I also soaked up her methods. Despite appearances to the contrary, Alison is a self taught mosaic artist. This, combined with her instinct for experimentation, means that she likes trying out new approaches to the mosaic fabrication process. By her own reckoning, some are more successful than others. Kerapoxy is her secret to grouting Mexican smalti – it’s slight shine when dry works well with the shine of the glass. For more about her methods, watch this video I made in her studio.
Visiting mosaics
The week included a day spent seeing Alison’s mosaic installations in the area. We also met up with members of the Mosaic Society of Ireland, recently set up by Alison and other professional artists. As a group, we visited two significant public mosaic sites. First, the Spirit of Place mosaics at Cong made by Rachel Sager, Julie Sperling and other internationally known mosaicists. Secondly, the various mosaics at the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site of Knock, including one of the largest mosaics in Europe.
There is more to it than that. It wasn’t just about Mexican smalti and kerapoxy. Alison and I looked at walls and talked about children. We laughed a lot and visited W.B.Yeat’s 14th century tower house just as the light began to fade. It was about opening up a world I never knew. For that, I am profoundly grateful.
Details from Alison’s work: Intertwined, Mosaic of the Community Brain, Ballybane Library.
Images of Alison’s foxglove made for the Merlin Park Community Hospital:
Details from Cong:
Details from Knock:
If you are interested in studying with Alison and using Mexican smalti, then check out her six-day workshop at the stunning Lagou Raxi hotel in Pelion, Greece.
*Alison imports her smalti from Mexico. The supplier is called MVM Studios: https://mvmstudios.com/en/