On any given day this year, I could be found nipping ceramic and glass tiles into small components to make mosaics. It made for a good soundtrack for my days in the studio.

A Night Out, 8″ x 8″, mosaic

The background of this piece is created using opus palladium or “crazy paving,” which refers to cutting all the pieces into various shapes and sizes. The background of A Night Out is composed of Mexican smalti (handmade glass tiles).

The rest of the mosaic features a combination of handmade ceramic tiles fired in our test kiln (notice the green leaves on the right hand side) and Murano Millefiori glass, which is made in Italy by cutting cross sections of bundled glass into small circles. Millefiori means a thousand flowers — so it is apt that I used a Millefiori for the flower under the bird’s beak (as well as the bird’s eye and the yellow-brown leaf in the center).

If you’re curious about where I source my materials, I get my smalti and ceramic pieces from two related sites — smalti.com and witsendmosaic.com. The Murano Millefiori glass comes from their website here.

Emerging in Early Spring, 8″ x 8″, mosaic

This mosaic features a large yellow-green ceramic leaf made here at the studio, more smalti pieces, and a few commercial ceramic and glass bits as accents.

Grid of 8″ x 8″ mosaics

These pieces will be featured at an upcoming show “Menagerie a Trois” at Cove Street Arts on 71 Cove Street in Portland, Maine. There is an opening reception on Thursday, December 1st from 5 to 7pm. The show is up through January 21st and features two other artists, Susan Amons and Richard Furneaux Remsen. Hope to see you there!