Woke up this morning in a philosophical frame of mind. Frankly, I woke up feeling grateful that my mind was working at all! You know how it is when you're sick - as with a bad cold virus - and your brain is just too muddled to think? That's been me most of this week. Haven't had a virus knock me down this bad since, well, last year. :) [I'm one of those people who, if the tenacious little germs - like evil aliens - see an opening in my defences will just lay waste to the landscape.]
Most of this week has been spent both being ill and then recouping strength. I slept, read books and watched tv shows on my laptop while remaining cocooned in my favorite reading chair by the patio window. It's been a cold and rainy week here in my part of the world which made the whole cocooning thing actually enjoyable. However, I'm the sort of person who absolutely hates to be sick and, even though I'm still coughing, have a hoarse voice and am carrying the tissue box everywhere, my brain is functioning. Hallelujah!
Part of what I did while sitting wrapped in my blanket - in between tv shows - was to read some blogs, read some news and look up some information. A new friend I met this past weekend suggested a book to me that she thought I'd find interesting in my role as a mosaic artist: "Finding Beauty in a Broken World" [2008] by author Terry Tempest Williams. Since I had the time I found information about the book and author and even a link to an NPR [National Public Radio] show, On Point, interview with her conducted by host Tom Ashbrook. You can find it here. Probably the best way to encapsulate what Williams' book is about in relation to the art of mosaic is to notate the review made by Publishers Weekly, [8/18/08] that I found on the website about her book :
Williams (The Open Space of Democracy) travels to Ravenna, Italy, a town famous for its ancient mosaics, to “learn a new language with my hands.” Back home in Utah, Williams views the lives of a clan of endangered prairie dogs—a species essential to the ecological mosaic of the grasslands and the creators of “the most sophisticated animal language decoded so far”—through the rules of Italian mosaics. After intimate study of a prairie dog town at Bryce Canyon, her visit to 19th-century prairie dog specimens at the American Museum of Natural History segues, dreamlike, to a glass case of bones from the genocide in Rwanda, where Williams, overwhelmed by the death of her brother but knowing that her “own spiritual evolution depended upon it,” travels with artist Lily Yeh, who “understands mosaic as taking that which is broken and creating something whole,” to build a memorial with genocide survivors. The book, itself a skillful, nuanced mosaic (“a conversation between what is broken... a conversation with light, with color, with form”) uses this “way of thinking about the world” to convincingly “make the connection between racism and specism” and sensitively argues for respect for life in all its myriad forms.
Wow. Add that to listening to the NPR interview and I got to cogitating philosophically about this art form that I've grown to love so much. And I realize that I don't view it as does Williams at all. I see nothing broken about mosaic anywhere at any level. But that's strictly my view.
I spent a bit of time doing research online looking at various definitions and thoughts regarding what mosaic art is. "Google" what is mosaic art and you get a diverse selection of sites. Most actual definitions simply say that mosaic is an art form that involves using various kinds of materials, in various sizes, and applying them in some way to a support in various designs and patterns. These finished pieces could be functional - like a mirror whose edges have been decorated with tesserae in a pleasing pattern; decorative - like a floor done in various colored tiles in some kind of pattern; to the relatively new world of fine art mosaic - art works [like paintings] done with mosaic techniques. The 2010 edition of the magazine, Mosaic Art Now, had a wonderful guest commentary by world renowned mosaic artist Sonia King in which she talks about the acceptance of mosaic as fine art. Read her thoughts on her website here. It's worth the time.
So what is my view? At every level, I see mosaic as whole. Whether you are looking at an individual tile or bit of tesserae, or seeing the finished piece from a distance, I see mosaic as bringing individual whole things together to create a new thing. Even when I chip a corner from a square tile I'm making a new whole piece to weave into the design tapestry. I love that you can go from the intimate close-up minutia of a mosaic to the far view that allows your eye to blend and meld all those minutias into a brand new whole.
What do you think?
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