Mosaic Art

Easy? What’s Easy?

/ Pam Goode / 5 Comments

Well, we all know the answer to that. Lately it’s been harder and, to be honest, I really don’t understand. Sure, we get old and people change for one reason or another, but overall I just don’t get it. Maybe I never will. And honestly, I’m not okay with that.

And in truth, I really don’t want to be okay with it. I want to be wildly engaged in life. I want to do things, see thing, love life and relish every minute. Is that so hard? I really, really, don’t think that’s too hard for any of us.

It comes along with all those things we’ve always wanted to do with our lives — DO THEM.

It comes along with good days and bad — make it work for now and then make it better.

It comes with love. Real love — the smile you see on the face of everyone you pass.

I can do that.

I want to chat with my girlfriends weekly and make fabulous plans that may or may not come true, and that’s still okay.

I want to try everything, and I’m okay even if I don’t like it after all.

I want to be able to say what I mean — and have someone understand. And care.

I’m worth that much.

We’re ALL worth that much.

@pamgoodewrites.com/sophieswildhair

Women’s International Mosaic Project

/ Pam Goode / 6 Comments

Don’t ask me why, but something popped into my head rather suddenly over the past month. And because our time on earth gets shorter by the day, I jumped on it. I’d love for you to jump in too.

I chose the name above because I want it to encompass the world. It won’t, of course, but that can still be my goal.

P.S. You do not need to be a woman to support women.

Details: My plan is to bring women of all ages, sizes, ethnicities and dreamers together. It seems to me that our lives as women are changing daily, and certainly our options are changing already. I won’t fixate on politics because I’ve never been that girl — though I’m beginning to realize that maybe I should be. We definitely have power, but can we control what’s going on now? — or what’s ahead?

What I do know is that we can always stand for peace and right.

Toward that end I hope to share these messages across the globe. And guess what — after one email blast and a couple of days, we already have women signed up from sea to sea in the the US, as well as multiple countries beyond. We need to use our strength. We need to be the women we are without keeping quiet. But most of all, we need to support and learn from each other. Nobody’s going to do this for us — especially now.

So far I’m mostly self-funding this women’s project because that’s my option, and that’s how much I want to bring us together. But as women, we’re inevitably strong, and our fierceness will get us farther into the future than we know.

So here’s what we need: Contact with each other; Appreciation for each other; Sharing with each other; Understanding and supporting each other as much as we can. And then movement: Saying yes, laughing together, brainstorming together, supporting each other. And yes, changing the world, even when it seems like what we do is the tiniest offering. We’re so much stronger than we know.

A Plan: We ALL need a plan, and so far we’re amazingly in sync. I’m good with a plan — I can do that — BUT I can also learn even more if I’m talking and brainstorming with others. Through this project, that’s exactly what we’re doing, no matter how closely or far apart we live, no matter our ethnicities, our shyness, or our uncertainties, we’re already doing it. It’s a pretty good start, and the most exciting part is that 99% of these women volunteered on the own.

Help We Can Use: Cutting templates from fiberglass mesh (perfect for you if you love cutting perfect 6-inch circles); mailing fiberglass mesh templates, talking up the project.

Mailing Templets: The cost to mail three 6″ circular fiberglass templates is variable but quite small across the US. Beyond the US, we’re currently working with women from Australia, Ireland, France, Italy, and Puerto Rico. I’d like to be able to help with the cost of mailing overseas.

Taking Part: If you’re interested, text me. We’ll be delighted to have you involved!

Paramour:

/ Pam Goode / 12 Comments


When he called to say he’d be home early, an hour away at most,
she hurriedly grabbed the signs of her weekend with passion:
the voluptuously hot-colored glass,
(a spontaneous deviation from her usual blues),
the achingly sharp tools …
the milky white adhesives,
the markers (you are MINE!),
the ubiquitous remnants of joy
left strewn across the table,
the chairs,
the floors,
her clothes…
the Tears for Fears,
the Prince,
the Elton.

Closet closed now,
the sweep of the vacuum,
the stash of memories
now buttoned up,
but only a wisp away
from tomorrow’s
studio time.

Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 2

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments

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.

Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 1

/ Pam Goode / 21 Comments


Hello Lovelies!

Today I’m posting a few of the mosaics I’ve created over the past gazillion years. What a joy it’s been! I’ve taken a break lately due to wrist issues, but I’m slowly making my way back in and loving it. The new pieces will be smaller (grumble), but they’ll still be a joy. They range in size from 8 x 8 inches to about 14 x 20.

Who has a favorite?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

/ Pam Goode / 10 Comments

Life is strange. Or maybe it’s me. Does it matter which?

I started making art when I was about 6, which comes so naturally to kids. And then of course I stopped. I stopped, in fact, for 47 years. I was busy doing wonderful things of course, and as a creative type, that never stopped. But mosaic art was to be my future, and I made my first piece at the ripe old age of 30, which, perhaps surprisingly, seems to be the usual path. And suddenly I fell hard. I loved the art form, and it loved me back. This in itself isn’t unusual — it was who I was and, I believed, who I was destined to be.

And then one day some years later, I stopped cold turkey and without a thought to the contrary. I don’t remember if this made me sad or happy. I don’t remember loss. The only change I remember was that I was working on some large pieces for a mosaic flower garden, and it was a kick ass project. I loved it. No matter that I had to drive five and a half hours to make the work/play dates — and then make the drive back home three days later. No matter that the roads were filled with big ass trucks barreling south down the interstate. No matter anything, I was in my fifties, in my prime, and it was pure bliss.

And then it happened like this: I was working at home on a piece, and the large center space was filled with beautiful, ethereal circles that pulled you into a distant paradise. My circles were perfect, and I loved them.

They loved me less. My glass grinder began emitting coughing noises. I added more water and solvent and kept working to make every curve perfection. I bought a new head. I spoke to it sweetly.

But the fingers . . . the fingers that had worked with me so well over so many happy decades …. I simply couldn’t control the budding arthritis in my happily toiling hands, and in a short series of hours, they just stopped working in the flawless way they had always worked. I got it done, delivered the piece and then another, but when I finished, I just walked away. I don’t think I’ve ever walked away before. It’s not who I am, and it didn’t feel right.

A few weeks later, I made it back to Virginia to help with the installation, and spent the weekend laughing and working. It was the best of times, but I knew my mosaic days were numbered, and I didn’t like that one little bit. But what do you do? Give up? Push on? Wait for healing? I chose the latter.

Last week I was teaching a class to a great group, and they were doing so well on their own that I walked over, sat down, … and picked up my tools. I picked up my tools for the first time in years. I looked at them with joy for the first time in years.

And then I started using them. No real pain, no backing off, no icky feelings — I just worked without worry or expectations.

And then I worked the next day.

I worked by myself in the studio. And … I had fun. Some very long-lost fun, and though concessions had certainly been made, it felt good. It felt really, really, REALLY good.

And you know, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some times it’s just what we need. And sometimes it opens whole new worlds just when you needed them.

P.S. These pieces were created to fit together with those of other artists in a community project.

Artwork by Pam Goode

Costa Rica: A Teaser

/ Pam Goode / 14 Comments

When I first made this trip 20+ years ago, we traveled across the Pan Am Highway, her roads broken into car-sized holes that slowed the journey considerably. It didn’t bother me an ounce, because travel teaches us truth. And during every visit since, I’ve watched Costa Rica blossom in so very many beautiful directions. I pray it will always be so.

And now, once again, we’re here! First, we’ll enjoy a beautiful three-hour journey through the countryside. Along the way, we’ll pass small houses with colorful laundry hanging, stalls selling creches and life-size deer figures, and vast fields of sugar cane. The backlit fronds of the cane will compete for our attention with their feathery tufts.

The roads are hilly and winding, with lushly planted homegrown guardrails of Dracena protecting against the steepest drops. Fortunately, traffic is mild. A small white dog trots up the road; a hilltop palm missing most of its fronds arcs leeward in the mist. I spy a rounded tree literally covered with white birds — at least 50 of them — and again, I wonder.

Halfway through the drive, we stop for coffee and the skies open wide for the twenty minute afternoon rain. When we pile back into the van, mist has settled onto the hairpin turns taking us down the mountain, but not enough to obscure the drive of banana, coffee, bougainvillea, citrus trees, dracena, palms, unfamiliar tropical fauna with giant leaves in every shape, blooming brush, and one surprising stand of three-needled pines.

Bridges become more frequent as we cross rocky streams and rivers, each path only one-laned, making a gentle dance of transport vans and the occasional bus or truck. Most of the locals walk, wisely against the traffic but still along the road with neither sidewalk nor shoulder for safety. Small signs advertise local businesses: “Many Meaty Dishes. All Meatless. All Tasty.” The rafters of a porch along the roadside support 20 bunches of bananas hanging by ropes. We pass through several small towns, and as the 5:00 sunset moves in, the people double in number — there is so much walking through the nightfall, and I hope hard that each arrives home safely.

We reach Finca Luna Nueva at what seems like 10 or 11 PM, though it is actually closer to 6:00, and we ascend the gravel just as moonstain moves in, spreading her welcome across the sky.

The lovely ladies of the lodge feed us well — offering chicken with saffron rice, soup, organic spinach, juices and salad from the farm, and I’m fast asleep before 9:00, tucked away in my little cabin with Costa Rican breezes blowing through.

I pray it will always be so.

P.S. Twenty years of visiting Costa Rica regularly, and I’ve never, ever tired of it. Bring it on in January 2024!

If I Were a Baobab

/ Pam Goode / 14 Comments

If I were a Baobab,
I’d be raucous and loud, and filled with song.

My veins would be rivers blue, and deep enough
to water the world.

My heart would be an all-hours reservoir;
my lungs exhaling oxygen and

life

in joyous bursts;

my arms
aflame with love.

And I think …
that yes, I can be this Baobab.

Mosaic Art and Poetry by Pam Goode
27″H x 21″W

5 Things I’ve Learned about Being an Artist

/ Pam Goode / 3 Comments


Late Bloomer, © Pam Goode. Glass, Stone, Beads, Thread, Carborundom

I still remember, and always will, the moment I decided to draw. Pretty much everyone in my family was artistically inclined, and at 7 or 8 I wanted to try my hand. I scrounged up a pencil and some paper and set to it — nothing too difficult — just a self portrait (insert laughter and/or groaning here). I was pretty chuffed at the result, but it only took one comment from one person (who was NOT an artist), to send me right back to the closet for a few decades.

Older and wiser, I now realize that art is created differently by each of us; that art has deep power no matter the subject or colors or latest craze; and that whatever originates from your hand and eye always, always contains something magical.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1) Do it your way. Do it every way. If your art looks just like the photograph, what’s the point?

2) It doesn’t matter if anyone likes it. Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter if YOU like it. We’re here to create, to learn from both our successes and failures, and to keep at it. Don’t allow your psyche to get stuck on any one piece. It’s a waste of your time. Keep creating.

3) If it moves you, it will move others. Work in a vacuum. Don’t listen to anyone. Follow your heart.

4) And then get out of the vacuum. Input feeds output. If you don’t point your brain in a new direction every now and then, it gets crusty and stale.

5) People, and often strangers, will sprinkle insights here and there that never occurred to you. It’s a gift. Take it!

6) Step back. Look away. Reunite. See with fresh eyes. If something nags at you more then once or twice, rip it out, smooth it over, and make it speak your voice. That’s what we’re here for.

7) Do I still draw? Yes I do, but now I do it with thick glass instead of a skinny pencil. Find your passion.

Never Goodbye; Hello World!

/ Pam Goode / 24 Comments

What Are You Waiting For? Pamela GoodeI’ve always been a believer in signs and wonders. Sure the signs are written in cryptic scribbles and wonders are all-too-often mirage-like. I know I saw this yesterday . . . didn’t I? Or was that the day I had three desserts for lunch? Nevertheless I work to recognize them, roll them around in my consciousness, and act … always the hard part. But the universe tends to take care of our reluctances and procrastination as well, usually by giving us first multiple signs, then several open doors, and finally a whack over the head. And honestly, don’t we sometimes need it?

In the early spring of 2006, my mother died after an all-too-brief and wholly-unexpected illness. She left me some money, also wholly unexpected, and over the next couple of weeks, a small studio in the arts district of Charlotte became available. It was a mess, and therefore a blank slate, and of course as it follows, completely irresistible. I had never considered running an art gallery, but there it was, and I happened to know all too well that mosaic art was often overlooked and in dire need of exposure. Ciel Gallery was born of an intersection of fate, opportunity, and need. Taking that unanticipated step, a step that had never once wandered around in my what-to-do-with-this-life wallowings, changed my life. And it changed me.

I’ve always reveled in behind the scenes work, creating in the low digit hours after midnight, wordsmithing the minutiae of contracts, or divining the exact intersection of visual and mental in graphic design. I’m the worker horse, never the face. Opening a business, and a cutting edge business at that, demanded more of me than I ever considered giving, and skills I would have been quite happy never to develop. But I did it, and it wasn’t as scary, in the end, as all that.

In 2008 I opened a gallery called Ciel, and I grew as a person and artist by leaps and bounds. In 2011, Ciel grew to include five partners and a brilliant new space, bringing in an all-star cast of visiting artists for workshops, hosting critically acclaimed exhibitions such as the Emma Biggs-curated Pattern Now, and coordinating the 52-artist mosaic mural Unfurled with Lin Schorr. I don’t care what others think about Ciel’s run — it knocks my socks off.

In true Pam fashion, I gave a lot of thought to the next step, but when it came, again it was universe-orchestrated. As of March 2014, Ciel Gallery + Mosaic Studio will become Ciel Gallery, A Fine Art Collective, with seven Member Partners, thirteen Member Artists, and a handful of consigners from North and South Carolina. Our new partner base is hugely talented in a variety of media, excited, generous, brimming with ideas, YOUNG and energetic.

Ciel Gallery Charlotte

Lease Signing Ciel #1; Guts and Glory Ciel #2; Lease Signing Ciel #3

I am thrilled and excited for a new venture. Of course it’s been bittersweet, and not without lingering moments of the unsettledness that bleeds from giving up your identity and wondering if there is a “next.” I know Ciel will thrive. I know the mosaic community now has ample opportunities for exhibition, and that I have had a part in that expansion. I know the Charlotte community and visitors will revel in greater access to local artists, and the art-hungry will thrill to offerings from new teachers. We’ll still feature mosaics of course, and we’ll still bring in visiting artists, but mosaic will no longer be isolated from other artforms. A good thing.

I worry about losing touch with the artists who’ve become close friends over the years, and who have, in so many ways, created Ciel right along with me. I feel angst about deserting a community that has made me who I am today, but at the same time, I’ve watched you all become superstars, and I’m excited to have new conversations about design and technique, or Gaudi and zellige instead of pixels and tracking numbers. And speaking of tracking numbers . . . NO MORE TRACKING NUMBERS! No more Box Room! No more trips to Office Depot for 50 more rolls of packing tape!

Instead of packing boxes and the daily details of gallery-running, I’m giddy at the idea of more art and more writing in my life. I’m thrilled with the growth of Mosaic Art Retreats and upcoming mosaic travel to Barcelona, Morocco, Costa Rica, France, Italy, and Greece. And over the moon with the beauty of Unfurled, my first and hopefully only-the-beginning collaborative public art project with Lin Schorr and 52 fabulous participating artists.

I’ll still be at the gallery weekly, still educating art lovers about the fabulous art of mosaics, still planning and hanging exhibitions and dreaming up new ways to infuse the universe with art. I’ll also be actually making art, spending time with my dad, cooking a bit, and maybe even jumping in the car for an impromptu visit to Asheville (or Creemore or Michigan or Sedona) with my guy.

So you’ll still know where to find me. What neither of us knows is exactly who I’ll be next time, because the universe may have a few more unexpected paths lying in wait. And I will walk them. With bells on.

Endless love to all who have supported Ciel (and me) through all our incarnations. Please stay with us for the rest of the ride. Paths diverge and reconnect. Never goodbye.