It’s that time again! Ciel Gallery is pleased to announce a Call to Artists for the 2010 edition of Contemporary Mosaic Art, an international juried exhibition celebrating the scope and artistry of mosaic art created today. A full prospectus and entry form is located at http://www.cielcharlotte.com, or you may contact me for an email version. Pictured above is last year’s winner, The Visit, by Kathy Thaden, Colorado. Entry Deadline is Monday, August 9.
Show us your Whimsy! Bees’ knees, purple trees, humongous nests, the witch of the west, broken crockery birds or a chair made of herbs — go mythical, magical, fanciful and fabulous to give your imagination free reign on 2-D or sculptural pieces that defy the humdrum. Art in any medium, style or size, will be considered. Exhibited work is not limited to mosaic but, as always, mosaic art is especially welcome.
For a full prospectus, go here and click on Flights of Fancy. Digital submission deadline March 1. International Juried Exhibition runs April 2 – May 21, 2010 with receptions Friday, April 2 and Friday, May 7 at Ciel Gallery, Charlotte, NC.
Shown above, Jocasta, by Australian Artist Marian Shapiro, from her series of Forbidden Fruits.
Tickle our fancy. Seven weeks left to pull out the stops and splash a little whimsy across these winter blahs.
Kaye Iverson, Aspens in Winter
October 5 is the deadline for Ciel Gallery’s November/December juried exhibition, Winter Whites. With entries already in from Australia, Cyprus, Monaco, Canada, and the US, this show promises to rival our current Contemporary Mosaic Art 2009 in its international-ness. Primarily fine art mosaic, the exhibition will also feature textiles, watercolor, acrylic and photography. For a full prospectus, go here.
I’m avalanche-ally excited about this show. Last year’s Simply Red was a bonfire-al success. The artists loved creating the heat and visitors basked in it. This year we’ll put the chill on. With an almost total absence of color, Winter Whites will be a textural banquet, and a deliciously apt follow-up to our neighbor Charlotte Art League’s October exhibit, Art Beyond Sight — that which tickles the four less used senses rather than the rods and cones of our retinas.
I am an unabashed color slut, but these Winter Whites are tickling my fancies big time.
Submit; Partake; Revel; Glean; Go Forth.
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
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.
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
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
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.
Today I became official, with the (six-hour) mounting of Ciel’s sign, and my first (and last) adventure with stained glass. I can’t tell you how giddy I am to 1) have that nine-square-foot sign off my living room floor, 2) to give my slit fingers and gouged nails a break from the grinder, 3) to have survived the deadly plexi-flex , and 4) to have kept the smile nailed in place through four mounting trials and three dismountings so the space could be adjusted, and adjusted, and adjusted. Mounted photos to follow shortly on my flickr site. Stained glass on plexiglas, with crystal point stars, ungrouted, mounted behind a clear glass pane.
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 