Why make mosaics? I often ponder the question as I sit cutting and nipping and placing in my little studio.
It is a pursuit which provokes the ‘yer wha?’ response when you mention it to others. It’s solitary, it’s a bit odd, it’s horribly slow and frankly it’s rather eccentric. So why do we do it? And how did we get from A (knowing nothing about mosaics) to B (being so absorbed in them that we are writing/reading blogs about them)?
Let me know
Making mosaics. Photo: Helen Miles MosaicsInspired by Julie Sperling’s brilliant piece on the experience of taking a mosaic course, I decided it would be interesting to collect your thoughts and stories about the moment when you realised that mosaics were for you. Whether you are a professional, full time mosaic maker or someone who makes mosaics in the odd spare moments: why make mosaics?
Even for those of you who did formal training in the arts, the decision to take up mosaics as your specialism must have raised a few eye brows. And for others, who were once perfectly normal people with a vague understanding but little interest in mosaics, how did you become a mosaic artist?
Tell me your stories
Sometimes mosaic artists talk about how they trained, what materials they use and what they hope to convey through our mosaics. But that doesn’t explain how they got started on making mosaics in the first place. That’s the story I want to hear. With your help, I hope to uncover the truth of this mutual fascination and follow up with a post about my findings.
A respected artist wrote that he started making mosaics when he retired in 2003 and his wife gave him a kit. A small, simple thing which led to a string of beautiful creations. There must be plenty of other tales out there, of unwitting stumblings into the world of mosaics. In addition, there must be those who pursued mosaics with a conscious and single minded intention. I want to hear them all.
First, here’s my story:
Question: why make mosaics?
Answer: I think I was always making them even when I didn’t know it. I remember being taken to visit artist friends of my parents when I was around nine. The visit was memorable because they were bohemian in a way that my parents were most decidedly not, and their house was full of colour and chaos.
quilting and wall building
During the visit I was shown a half made patchwork quilt and I can still feel the thrill of excitement and delight I felt when I saw it. From then on I started making my own patchwork quilts and later I would spend long afternoons happily helping my father mend the old stone walls around our house in Perthshire, Scotland – surely just a large, practical kind of mosaic making.
Many years later and via a very circuitous route, I arrived in Greece. I didn’t speak a word of Greek. I was without work and hemmed in by small children. Journalism, my previous occupation, was no longer a possibility. But one hot day on a beach in Pelion, as I ran pebbles through my fingers. I had a light-bulb moment. I knew, just knew, that I wanted to learn how to make mosaics.
But maybe the reason I felt so certain about mosaics goes deeper than a mere whim on the beach. My mother is a classicist and an extraordinary knitter which is surely just another way of making mosaics except in wool.
So it’s not surprising perhaps that my teenage quilting had a bit of a classical theme going on:
Which led in turn to mosaics inspired by ancient designs:
And these needle point covers made by my great grand father, an Edinburgh surgeon, who used needle work to keep his fingers nimble, suggest that the urge to create things by adding one square to another might go back even further:
Now it’s your turn: why did YOU start making mosaics……?