This piece was made completely with mosaic glass in various shapes, colors, and sizes. The goal was to create my version of a Colorado Sunrise, including rocky land and tumbling stones.
Pam Goode, Artist
Morning Becomes Electric
Design
Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 2
Artwork Top to Bottom and Left to Right:
The Wishing Tree: SOLD, 8″ x 8″, Glass, Millefiori on Wedi Board.
Colorado Dawn: AVAILABLE, 7″H and 13″ W, Mexican Smalti, Mexican Smalti Tortillas, Chopped and Divoted.
Mirrored Wall: NOT AVAILABLE, 33″H x 15″W, Hand-Cut Mirror and Colored Mirror; Outdoor Installation for Ciel Gallery (now demolished).
Wasteland: SOLD, 18″ x 18″; Agate, Mirror, Stained Glass, Unglazed Porcelain, Aquarium Gravel, Pewter; This mosaic began with a dream. Because the image is so void-like, I included lines from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland and The Hollow Men using small pewter beads that crash into the deep. The mirror-backed “void” reflects the viewer. From the center, spirals of poetry and blank human faces form a rough heart shape, balancing the sense of desolation with a touch of hope. From the central abyss, the tesserae become less defined and increasingly chaotic, until in some spots there are no tesserae at all, but only a gouged space remaining.
He Said, She Said: NOT AVAILABLE; 12″ x 7″ Drawing on Paper (created for a future project that didn’t happen).
Sunbather: NFS, 10″H x 10″W by 5″ Deep; Crystal, Beads, Agate, Glass, Shell, Copper on Stone.
Wild Hearts: SOLD, Unglazed Porcelain, Clay, Beads.
Sunflower Table: SOLD, 46″ rectangular mosaic partially shown, Glass.
The Boy with a Moon and Star: SOLD, Glass on Wedi Board.
Late Bloomer: AVAILABLE, 10″H x 36″L x 18″W; Selected by and displayed at the Society of American Mosaics 2010; Glass, Metal, Mineral, Shell, Beads, Carborundum, Wire, Hand-Carved Styrofoam base by me; Through art, I hope to capture and momentarily magnify archetypal awakenings that resonate with the human spirit. I’m drawn to create with mixed materials because I want, above all, to create as full an image as I can manage. Late Bloomer pulls from the miscellanea of life — sometimes messy, sometimes arbitrary, always fascinating, always more cluttered than we had imagined. The pruning and fitting together of disparate materials becomes a way to order my own thoughts, emotions, and priorities, allowing the finished piece to serve as a kind of talisman.
Accidental Obsessions
Scarlet. Vermilion. Ruby. Cherry. Cerise. Crimson. Oh, the colors that grab us and make us their own.
You know it. I know it. The question is, do we hide it or flaunt it?
We all have obsessions — some more than others of course (ahem) — and for the most part, they’re harmless and fun. Let’s face it, if you have a passion, it’s never a one-time deal. You’re definitely, without the skinniest skinny of a doubt, going back for more.
It was exhibition time, and this month it was our turn to choose, our turn to flaunt, perhaps even our turn to be a bit naughty, and we were three girls at the ready.
We named this show Accidental Obsessions, because at some point, aren’t they all? Right before you just can’t get enough.
“Accidental” is an interesting word, isn’t it? I can’t help wondering where the line is between truly “accidental” and “planned in obsessive detail over at least two thirds of my entire life.” I’ve known a lot of shoe girls over the years, and no wonder — they strike the eye like wildfire.
I’ll quickly admit that the photos to the right look vaguely like something from a murder scene. Red has no bounds, and still we gasp and grab.
P.S. This display was created by Ciel Gallery in Charlotte several years ago as a teaser for an art exhibition. We drove to the nearest Goodwill and bought all the red shoes we could find, painted a few extras, and put on our Come Hither looks. A totally delicious evening!
Big Ole Polkie Dots
I’m smack mad in love with those big ole polkie dots. Mondo, I loved you with the black and whites, I loved you with the magentas and the toucan yellows, and I loved you with the little ball hats, but those polkies have my heart forever.
When I think of polka dots, I think of two things: little girls in first dresses, and Julia Roberts at the horse races, looking fabulous and screaming like a sailor. What these images have in common is deceptively simple: truth. The cool thing about children is that children are ALWAYS who they are — and in this instance, so is the Pretty Woman. This is what we lose as we “grow up”, and Mondo wants to hand it back to us. I’m so ready!
Overwhelmingly, my friends say they love the dress, but couldn’t wear it. 1) Polka dots are for children. 2) Big polka dots are funny looking. 3) I’ll look fat.
1) Yes. 2) Yes. 3) Probably. 4) And I’m gonna feel damn good reconnecting with my inner child, giggling at the giant polkies, and, well, in this Age of McDonalds, doesn’t everything make me look fat?
In truth, very few people could pull off Mondo’s clothes. BUT his clothes have a spirit, a soul, and a philosophical point of view that we, as women, often desperately need, and that is that we need to get WAY past worrying what’s “appropriate”, what our color is, who’s saying we look trashy behind our backs, wear we shop, whose name is on our label, whether we’re too old or too top heavy to wear x, and give ourselves the freedom to let go and have a little fun from time to time. When I hit 40 and had a yearlong meltdown, I stopped caring what other people thought, and one of the ways I reminded myself of that on a daily basis was through my clothes. It was a HUGE awakening for me, and I love Mondo for saying “be who you are and have fun when you can, cause there’s a lot of bad stuff in the world.”
Viva la Big Ole Polkie!
Art: Not (Just) a Pretty Picture
Ciel Gallery’s exhibition entitled The War Against Peace presents the responses of artists across the nation as they ponder the question of why we continue to cry for peace and simultaneously continue to wage war. Best of Show winner Janet Kozachek, whose Fallen Floyd is pictured above, illustrates the emotional and physical torture of war in stone and handmade ceramic. Phil Fung‘s War and Peace depicts a hundred or so maniacal Continue reading
Mosaic Howl
Okay, random things first. In between my too-many pursuits, I finally finished Howl, my mosaic protest piece, just in time for the opening of The War Against Peace Exhibition at Ciel Gallery. I chose to work this piece in a folk-art style, because it is so often the “child” within us that reacts most instinctively to the atrocities around us. The image depicts a Peace Angel howling in anguish over the current state of Man and Earth. Alphabet Millefiori spell out her howls as she flies over the land surveying our lives below. This piece uses vitreous, smalti, millefiori, glass beads, and shell. Click on the image to enlarge and read the messages.
Community Mosaic Project Gluefest 1
The great thing about mosaic artists is that they just never want to put down the nippers. So what starts out as “just finishing this one little section” ends up with you staring zombie-like across a cup of steaming tea while a Dear One utters words that sound oddly like, “What happened to you? You never came to bed last night?” Hence the Premier Gluefest of Charlotte Art League’s Community Mosaic Project was a howling success, Continue reading
Mosaic Maestro Giulio Menossi to Jury Contemporary Mosaic Art
I am such a huge fan of Master Mosaicist Giulio Menossi, that I would consider it the highest honor to be plastered with smalti and embedded into one of his wholly fantastical three-dimensional works, just to have the honor of hanging about in his studio and watching this genius at work. Continue reading
Mosaic Art Deadline August 4
Entries for the Contemporary Mosaic Art Juried Exhibition must be received by digital submission by August 4, 2008. A full prospectus is available here. Questions can be asked and answered here. The exhibition will feature artists working in mosaic from across the globe, both 2-D and 3-D, showcasing a wide variety of materials. Show dates will be September 5 – 26, and will include several receptions. Best of Show Award is $500, sponsored by MosaicSmalti.com. Artists’ Reception and Cocktail Salon will be held Saturday, September 6, sponsored by ArtfulCrafter.com. More information on Ciel Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina is available here. Mosaic Art featured on the postcard shown above by (clockwise from upper left) Virginia Gardner: Secrets; Valerie Fuqua: Dangerous Curves; Marian Shapiro (inset): Lolita; Kathleen Jones: Un Moment de Paix, and Pamela Goode: The Happiest House.
Call to Artists: Contemporary Mosaic Art Juried Exhibition
It is with utmost pleasure and not a small amount of surprise that I announce the opening of Ciel Gallery and Mosaic Studio and, coincidentally, a call to artists for our first juried mosaic exhibition. With the generosity of MosaicSmalti.com and ArtfulCrafter.com, we’ll have a fabulous show opening September 4, 2008 in Charlotte, NC — as far as I can tell, a real first for these parts. For more information about Ciel, go here. For a full prospectus, go here and click on the September exhibition. Hmmm, should I say “Y’all Enter??” Well, perhaps not. But hey Babes and Boys, let’s show this city some killer mosaic, every which way and then some. Power to the tesserae, and I bow to those who cajole the bits of glass and stone into arias of light and texture and heart.
Pam Goode Writes 