I am a mosaic artist, I have a studio in Newport, Essex where I teach groups of adults the art of mosaic making - I also bought a kiln and am teaching myself (and sometimes others) ceramics by sourcing information online and from books, which understandably brings a fair share of frustration. Ceramics being a much more demanding technically business than mosaic making, there have been some blue moments opening failed firings and wonder WHAT WENT WRONG!?
But there have also happy happy moments where techniques have been successful and I feel very very clever. Very clever.
How did I end up with a mosaic studio? It all began when my friend Lorna invited me down to Kent to spend a day on a course in a freezing cold barn making mosaics with Oliver Budd (celebrity mosaic maker - ie not very famous outside of people who commission mosaics for churches, cathedrals and town centres - but he's fab). I'd spent 2 years changing nappies and that day rediscovered a little corner of my creative self (Lorna and I designed packaging together at Marks and Spencers design studio on Baker Street in those days) and I had my epiphany (I had to spell check that), I thought - there must be a way I can spend much more time doing this. All Olivers wonderful commissioned work propped round the studio and boxes and boxes of gleaming materials really captured my imagination... that first mosaic was huge, a lobster that was, in hindsight, rather crudely made, I'll post a picture when I excavate it from the depths of my shed. It was placed behind my cooker in my last house, funny the buyers didn't want it!
In my next post more about how I ended up with a studio of my own 10 years later, but today's
task on this bright cold day (hooray no rain for the first time in a week) is to head to my (freezing) studio, clear up the debris from a busy class of nine yesterday and prepare for tomorrows Saturday class (there are a few spaces left just in case you are reading this and live anywhere near Saffron Walden in Essex)...
