Elemental and intimate details from original mosaic works, caught my eye at a number of exhibitions and tours during the Society for American Mosaic Artists 2013 Conference held in Tacoma/Seattle, Washington. One ground breaking exhibition was “TRANSPOSITION”, a site-responsive exhibition showcasing the work of fifteen artists from the Americas whose work is work grounded in the mosaic medium on view at Inscape. Another, was “Northwest Mosaic Today”, an invitational exhibition of artwork by fifteen artists from Washington and Oregon on view at Tacoma Public Library’s Handforth Gallery. Additional works were found during the Seattle mosaic bus tour, expertly researched by Richard Davis and finally, at the Museum of Glass, “Mosaic Arts International” featured the work of 47 artists from seven countries.

Photos by Lillian Sizemore
lilliansizemore.com

All artworks shown in this slideshow remain the copyright of the Artists.

watch in FULL SCREEN – Sound ON – give it time to load – run time about 2 minutes

please enjoy!

READ Kevin’s article here:

http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2013/04/12/31330/photos-amazing-mosaic-mural-discovered-inside-down/

LISTEN : 4 min. 12 sec.

The radioshow appears to have shook loose another John Smith Mural, and we’re still investigating.

Stay Tuned.

Do you know of an artist named John Smith who was active in the LA modernist movement in the 1950-60s? He was known for tapestry and mosaic artworks. Please contact me.

UPDATE: April 16, 2013: my story got picked up on BOING BOING too. the most popular blog on the planet.

http://boingboing.net/2013/04/16/the-secret-history-of-a-hidden.html

1950s Los Angeles Petroleum Mosaic in Greg Johnson home. photo: Kevin Ferguson/KPCC

Mosaic historian and artist, Lillian Sizemore, has spent years tracing the American mosaic movement to support preservation awareness, historic importance and cultural value of mosaic works world-wide. Through Ms. Sizemore’s research, she uncovered the film that had been dormant for nearly 60 years.  “THE WORLD OF MOSAIC” is a 1956 educational documentary originally made as a 16mm full color film. Nearly three years in the making, THE WORLD OF MOSAIC, explores the global interest in mosaic and its cultural potential and importance.  Producer Ernest D. Rose and director N. H. Cominos, in cooperation with the University of California in Los Angeles, brought to the screen as the first definitive film to explore the art of mosaic through every major civilization.

Powerfully narrated by Hollywood star, Richard Widmark and interwoven with original orchestral music by Eugene Hemmer, the evolution of mosaic is shown moving from Sumerian, Greek, and Roman cultures through Byzantine and Aztec toward a renaissance in Mexico and the United States. The film runs 28 minutes and concludes with a dramatic presentation of Joseph L. Young, one of America’s most accomplished mosaic muralists, creating a cantilevered mosaic for the Los Angeles Police Facilities Building, designed by renowed architect Welton Becket FAIA.

THE WORLD OF MOSAIC underscores the growing need for art in architecture with examples of contemporary mosaics anticipating the potential for mosaic as an integrated art for our modern times. Both audiences and specialists will find this an imaginative film conceived to portray how much of man’s cultural heritage resides in THE WORLD OF MOSAIC.

Sizemore had many meetings with Dr. Rose, who has passed the film and archival materials on to her. Additional input and Interest from Dr. Joseph Young’s family and the LA Conservancy has led to increased awareness of the midcentury work featured in the film, bringing awareness  to the recent closure of the Parker Center in 2012 (formerly the Los Angeles Police Facilities Bldg.) and uncertainty of the future preservation of Dr. Young’s mosaic mural.

Sizemore worked with a top Hollywood production house to undertake a state-of-the-art digital restoration from the original 16mm film to bring this classic back to life in DVD and Blu-Ray formats. In its day, the film won several cinema awards including the approval of the Ceramic Tile Institute of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

Premier Public Viewing: Society of American Mosaic Artists 2013 Conference in Tacoma Washington on Saturday. April 13, 2:30 PM, presented by Lillian Sizemore.

http://www.americanmosaics.org/wp/index.php/?page_id=3130

Official Film Website:

http://www.theworldofmosaic.com

Thar’s Oil in Them Thar Walls. Vintage mosaic mural discovered.. New article by Lillian Sizemore for Mosaic Art Now. Click on the picture for more!

Midcentury mosaic found behind layers of paneling …now what? Read more at MosaicArtNow.com

A useful and clear outline for conducting a productive art critique.

See more of Leigh Hyam’s work at artsreal.com.

Her memorial page is here https://www.facebook.com/LeighHyamsMemorial

Her obituary and many photos of her formidable career may be found at
https://www.facebook.com/notes/leigh-hyams-memorial/leigh-hyams/137965173041025.

Photo by Richard Whittaker

GUIDE TO A GOOD DRAWING and PAINTING CRITIQUE
by Leigh Hyams

The group understands and agrees that you are there to learn from each other and each other’s work. You do not learn from a“Show and Tell” attitude, nor do you hesitate to give your honest opinion because you might hurt someone’s feelings. Don’t “take care” of each other. You are serious working artists trying to become better artists, period.

Any number of artists can be in a crit group though 8 or 10 are usually the maximum because of time and space constraints. A leader is not essential.

MECHANICS

Choose a definite time and place to meet regularly—twice a month? Once a month make an agreement to stick to the arrangement for a six-month trial period to start. If your house burns down and you can’t come to a meeting, you are responsible for finding a (suitable) substitute artist to take your place for that session. Keep the group together and firmly committed for the six months, no matter what.

Always start on time and skip the coffee and cookies. Think like serious artists right from the start. It’s friendly and informal but it is a working session and you are there to learn from each other and each other’s work.

A two-hour session is usually best. Divide the number of members into 120 minutes so people are assured equal time for discussion of their work. (i.e. ten members= twelve minutes each). Appoint a timekeeper or use a simple kitchen timer as a reminder.

Use as much of your personal time period as you choose—showing and discussing with the group your old or new work, unfinished work, and/or discuss studio, galleries, museums or art material problems. If you feel you have no work to bring in, come anyway. NO excuses. You will be nourished and validated as an artist just by being there.

Baudelaire, 27″ x 49″ hibiscus, charcoal and acrylic on canvas 2006, by Leigh Hyam, photo: artsreal.com

PROCEDURE

Whomever wants to begin places work in front of the group—on the wall or leaning against it depending on the facility. Pay attention to placement. Leave enough space between each piece, be sure they’re not crooked, etc. so they’re presented respectfully and well for discussion.

It’s important for each group member to verbally express his or her opinion. The learning goes deeper that way. Complete honesty is necessary and everyone’s opinion is valid. An opinion is an opinion, nothing else. If they contradict each other, great! Further conversation about the differences is usually stimulating and informative.

Remind yourselves periodically that you are discussing the specific work itself, not the character of the artist who made it. If there are negative comments about your work, listen to them openly, ask questions of the speaker to clarify things if you want, think about them. You may find the comments helpful or a pain in the neck, or they may give you a wonderful new idea. Comments are opinions to listen to and consider. You are not obliged to act on them.

DISCUSSION PARAMETERS

When an artist places work in front of the group, take a quiet moment to “enter” it. Let your eyes travel around individual paintings and be aware that the rest of your body is also sensing, perceiving and experiencing the work.

One way to start is to say “How does this painting make you feel?” “It makes me feel excited/boredhappyconfused/apprehensive”. Then discuss what it is in the painting itself (excluding any subject matter depicted) that causes you to have that particular feeling. Is it the artist’s choice of color? Turbulent brush strokes? etc.

Don’t “read” a painting like a book, don’t “de-code” the images presented and tell the group what they remind you of. Explanations or stories in words that the subject matter reminds you of may be interesting in themselves but they are irrelevant in a critique. We are only concerned with the actual painting itself, the VISUAL language in which it is speaking—how the artist is handling the relationship of color, line and space, its movement on the 2 dimensional ground, its rhythms, texture, line quality, and how they relate to the expressiveness of the images being painted.

If your attention is drawn to a certain area that doesn’t feel resolved, say to the group “That orange spot in the lower right bothers me”. Ask the person to state WHY it bothers them. “I don’t like the color..” What color would you suggest? Where would you put it?

Leigh with mentor Philip Guston, 1965.

Pay particular attention to the relationship of shapes, their values (darkness or lightness), to color qualities (intense, dull, transparent, opaque) and to their emotional power. Note how color moves in a painting, and how it has been applied to the paper or canvas. Is the “skin” of the painting interesting or is it all the same? Is it thick? thin layers? applied with the same density and the same brush strokes? same rhythm? Is more texture needed? Did the artist use a single brush for the entire painting? Does it need more variation? Does the canvas breathe?

And always notice how different elements in the painting appear to exist on different spacial planes, how space moves in and out, and across the picture plane. Discuss how the artist made that happen on a flat piece of paper or canvas. Does the painting have deep space, shallow space? Is it flat, dead and unmoving? If so, what could be done about it? And always, is the passion and committment of the artist sustained throughout the painting?

SUMMARY

Whatever comments are made about individual works, positive or negative, try to state your opinion fearlessly and clearly, and then explain what it is in the painting that makes you feel that way. Make suggestions for change if you have some. Comment on what you like as well as dislike about individual works and again, explain WHY. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for future work an individual artist could pursue but don’t take it personally if the artist doesn’t do it.

Realize that you are learning a new language and know that each critique you take part in is educating you, sharpening your perception, and opening new possibilities to explore in your work. It’s a facinating ongoing process and as your understanding of visual language deepens, you deepen as an artist and so does your work.

Leigh Hyam’s Studio, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico  2008

HONOR OUR ELDERS

Gunilla Klingberg, “Wheel of Everyday Life” (Installation View) Rice Art Gallery, Houston TX
Photo: Nash Baker © nashbaker.com

If you are a regular visitor to this blog you may have explored the right sidebar,  where I curate a roster of “Mandala Artists” who are working with the mandala form in unique and provocative ways.

Inclusion on the list has to do with my personal draw to the artworks; it can be a response to the artist’s ethos, the material, the scale, use of pattern, or mastery of a technology. The common strand has to do with expert craftsmanship and a deep inquiry into the potentiality of the circle. Often these artists explore the contemporary zeitgeist of everyday consumerism with forms of Eastern spirituality.

Here’s today’s addition:

Stockholm-based artist, GUNILLA KLINGBERG, whose installation is at Rice Art Gallery in Houston, Texas. “Wheel of Everyday Life” will be on view from Jan. 31 to March 17, 2013,

If you like Klingberg’s Sand print work, see Jim Denevan‘s massive sand drawings,  or Simon Beck‘s snow-circles.

If you like Klingberg’s Logo pavements, have a look at Virginia Fleck’s plastic bag mandalas.

Gunilla Klingberg’s psychedelic animations have a family relationship with the more randomly formed kaleidoscope pattern, the strict geometry of Moorish patterning, the Persian carpet, and the ritual painting of Hinduism, the so-called mandala. The last of these is a picture which exists solely to function as a conduit for the observer’s concentration so it can immerse itself in an altered, suspended state.

— Mats Stjernstedt – director of Index, Stockholm.

Gunilla Klingberg, Wheel of Everyday Life, 31 January – 17 March 2013. Commission, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Texas. Photo: Nash Baker © nashbaker.com. Via artdaily.com

Read Rachel Hooper’s interview with Klingberg about her recent Rice University installation HERE

“I got the idea of letting the pattern grow by extending it from the gallery space out to the foyer space and meandering up the windows, to emphasize the viral aspect of the pattern. I like the fact that the foyer area also is a passage, there is no way to escape the pattern but one is forced to walk on it.”

Other installations can be seen on Klingberg’s website

Mantric Mutation, 2004, screen on plastic (each part 80 x 80 cm.) laser cut texts in plexi glass on reflecting film, variable size (detail). Via nordenhake.com

A Sign in Space, 2012, Sandprint at Laga beach, Sense & Sustainability, Art biennale, Urdaibai, Spain. image via wordlesstech.com

(thanks to Nancie Mills Pipgras, editor of Mosaic Art Now for mandala spotting)

“Everyone put your hands toward me, I want to feel your energy”

Beyoncé has come Full Circle. Yesterday’s Super Bowl XLVII halftime performance in the round to over 20 million viewers was one GIANT MANDALA of screaming energy and a heroine’s mythic journey.

We are often quick to judge “superstars” not as creative artists, but as commercial money-making machines.  In this post we look at the creative choices and underlying messages within this Pepsi-powered performance.

“Everybody put your hands towards me! Everybody – c’mon, I want to feel your energy ” ~ Beyonce, Super Bowl XLVII

Got the Ring.

Beyoncé’s performance was full-on booty-shaking electricity-blowing Goddess Power. We feel the power of her stardom, her sexiness, the dichotomy of black leather and lace. She was joined by her soul sisters Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child, literally popping out of the Stage-Womb, like twin Athenas,  born fully-formed and ready to rock.  Guitarist Bibi McGill, harnessed Fire Goddess Pele’s volcanic power with her flame-shooting entrance.

This mythical performance was enhanced by the use of aerial footage of the Mandalic-stage.  The illuminated floor featured Busby-Berkeleyesque human mandalas projected all around her. The stage also featured her twin profiles – face-to-face – as she conjured up the contradiction of duality. Perhaps the yin-yang effect marks her connection to Sasha Fierce, Beyoncés alter-ego, as well as her fight for personal independence. This journey to center is the subject of her self-edited, directorial debut documentary “Beyoncé: Life is But a Dream” .  She even learned how to use Final Cut Pro so she could be 100% hands-on for the project.  Personally, I can’t wait to see this – it airs on HBO February 16th. Check it out HERE.

Scroll down for a sampling of the cosmic mandala formations from her big show.

Beyoncé’s Illuminated Journey to Center

Swirling Mandala of Goddess Power

Guitarist Bibi McGill and Beyonce in the Bindi – center of the mandala

Hexagonal Beehive references, like the Delphic Oracle

Phyllotaxis Pattern of Fierceness

Eight-Fold Geometric Yoni Flower, 8 symbolizes the cyclical nature of life, the breath, infinity.

“How do I stay current, How do I stay soulful?”

— Beyoncé, quote from her upcoming documentary.

WATCH THE FULL SHOW HERE http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl/0ap2000000135280/Beyonce-Super-Bowl-XLVII-halftime-performance

As a mosaic enthusiast, I was excited to find a rare example of the motif of the ‘sickle and hammer’ in mosaic, designed as a comet emblazoned across the ceiling of their patio. Diego and Frida were ardent communists and they incorporated this philosophy into their lives and artwork. In fact, Leon Trotsky was their neighbor and  shhhh, Frida’s lover.

Here’s a short video (1.54 min.) showing Rivera and Kahlo, with Trotsky and his wife, having a friendly hang around the compound.

Frida and Diego’s Casa Azul features a mosaic Hammer and Sickle, or is that a Martellina?

Fresco by Diego Rivera, ‘Man at the Crossroads’ depicts Lenin front and center. Image captured before it was destroyed in 1934.

Frida and Diego take it to the streets, circa 1933

Diego Rivera included a controversial portrait of Lenin in his 1933 Rockefeller Center mural in New York to such an uproar, that it was chipped off the wall the following year. But in their own home, they had no such limitations. Their mosaic is made of grey and white local volcanic lava rock, as is the entire exterior of the house.

I asked the Casa Azul docents who made the mosaic, but no one knew.

Could it have been created by their friend, architect/painter/muralist Juan O’Gorman, who championed this style of fitted stone mosaic in Mexico? Mr. O’Gorman’s most prominent and well known work can be found at the Central Library of the UNAM campus, Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México, in Mexico City.

South Wall of the Central Library mosaic, by Juan o”Gorman, 1948-55. Uses over 150 different types of stone quarried from all over Mexico. photo Lillian Sizemore

Between 1949 and 1951 O’Gorman designed and directed the construction of the Central Library, a building covered with a mosaic of natural stones, covering an area of 4000 meters square. The mosaic was set onto pre-cast concrete slabs, each measuring one meter square. An iron grid was constructed onto the facade of the structure, and each completed slab was hoisted and bolted into place. This was a ground-breaking construction technique of the time. Some of the best background I’ve found on the murals, their meaning, history, and construction methods can be found on the University’s website (in Spanish), here.

View of the West and South Walls – the mural is rich with symbolism, invoking the ancient god of wisdom Tlaloc, and tracing Meso American history to contemporary times. Jacaranda trees in bloom. photo: Lillian Sizemore

The following year (2006), while on another trip, I discovered this fantastic mural in Oaxaca, while driving with a friend to her son’s piano lesson. Pull over!

As is often the case, many apprentices are trained on a large job like the UNAM library. I suspect the artist who made this mural had worked with O’Gorman, then went on to do this work for the city of Oaxaca. The subject of the mural is legal reform, and it is dated 1963. The materials reflect the UNAM and Frida’s comet: a wide variety of local colorful stones, perhaps even leftovers from the UNAM job? In the center of the mural, a beautifully carved bas relief depicts the eagle eating the serpent in a modernist, almost art deco, style.

The work is signed and dated 1963. I don’t have a detail of the signature, darn.

The construction method is also similar to UNAM, with the stones set into a slab, set into a smaller, but regular grid framework. A muscular, graphic approach accented with contrasting outlines identify the rather blocky subjects from the background.

Beautiful green chalcedony stone in the background. Much of the Oaxacan population are indigenous Zapotec. photo: Lillian Sizemore

Guelatao, Oaxaca is the birth place of Mexico’s most famous leader, President Benito Juárez. Love these fluffy rams.

Such vibrant color from natural stone. But is the blue area painted?

Diego Rivera’s travels and commissions in the United States during the 1930s had lasting impact on US muralism. His interaction with many artists employed through the WPA Federal Arts Program can not be underestimated. O’Gorman’s herculean effort at UNAM marked technological breakthroughs for the use of mosaic in the architectural setting.

Mexico is rich with mosaic work made from a variety of media, stone, smalti, and even seeds.But for today, just a small example of some unique and beautiful work from my mosaic archives and travels.

¡VIVA MÉXICO!

¡ART FOR THE PEOPLE !

more on Frida and Diego’s politics here

“Each person’s life is like a mandala- a vast, limitless circle.

We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life. We enter a room, and the room is our mandala. We get on the subway, and the subway car is our mandala, down to the teenager checking messages on her iPhone and the homeless man slumped in the corner.

We go for a hike in the mountains, and everything as far as we can see is our mandala: the clouds, the trees, the snow on the peeks, even the rattlesnake coiled in the corner. We’re lying in a hospital bed, and the hospital is our mandala. We don’t set it up, we don’t get to choose what or who shows up in it. It is, As Chogyam Trungpa said, “the mandala that is never arranged but is always complete.” And we embrace it just as it is. 

Everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening. From this point of view, awakening is right at your fingertips continually. There’s not a drop of rain or a pile of dog poop that appears in your life that isn’t the manifestation of enlightened energy, that isn’t a doorway to sacred world.

But it’s up to you whether your life is a mandala of neurosis or a mandala of sanity.“

(From Pema Chodron’s newest book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change)

I LOVE how REAL she gets. Certainly, we can embrace the exaltation of a pristine mountain vista, but

Holy Dog Poop? Holy Hospital Bed?

Would your life be better if you allowed for this possibility? Would things flow smoother? Could life be less “neurotic?”

Inspiration Mandala, 2009 by Lillian Sizemore, from Mosaic from the Mind’s Eye.

Inclusion is a concept we embrace in my “Mosaic from the Mind’s Eye” classes. Mosaic can be a metaphor for all the pieces and fragments of oneself, so this includes the neurosis and the sanity…We must start there. We use the mandala form as the container for the work, and as both Chodron— from a spiritual perspective, and C. G. Jung, from a psychological perspective—have pointed out, the Mandala is a container for Life. Working with the Mandala can be a pathway to wholeness.

Regardless of your technical abilities or medium, if you can approach your ART with that same sense of ‘sacred allowing’—much is revealed. Not to say we don’t discern, or edit, or make choices. This is a process.

One tool we use in the process is Deep Listening.

Let’s begin with a simple exercise.  5 minutes:

Sit upright

in a chair, on a floor cushion, sitting on your sofa… be comfortable and supported

Close your eyes or lower your eyes to the ground, focus on a spot about two feet in front of you on the floor

*

Simply take a few breaths— deep breaths if you like— relax and feel your sitz bones resting on the seat 

Now soften your breathing, allow it to refine, cycle, and quiet down.

*

Relax your eyes. Relax your ears. Feel the bone around your BRAIN…

Allow your hardworking brain to relax and soften inside your skull

Feel the shift in your sensations as you do this

**

Now

Bring attention to the SOUNDS around you, Actively LISTEN

Take your awareness OUTSIDE the BUILDING

If a thought comes up, just let it pass for now and gently come back to breathing, listening

Listen to the distant sounds, a car passing, a faraway plane, a dog barking, a leaf blower…

It’s all the same… just distant sounds.

**

**

Now bring your listening closer, to INSIDE the BUILDING

Perhaps there are movements in the next room,  a distant conversation, a refrigerator rattle…

Continue to breathe gently, let what you hear pass through you

It’s all the same.

There is nothing to do. No action needed.

**

Now, bring your attention closer to you, inside the ROOM

Sense how this is different from your focus on the larger space

Perhaps you hear a ticking clock, the hum of a computer, a purring cat…

**

**

Now, come closer. Inside your SELF

Listen to your own BREATHING

Listen to your HEART BEAT  

Hear the blood in your veins, feel your pulsing.

Listen for your breath coming in, breathing out —

the warm  In breath,

the cooler Out breath

If a thought comes up, let it go for now and gently bring attention to your breath.

**

**

This is You, right now.

Perhaps you sense aches or pains, a flutter of memory, a dull headache, a quickening of joy in your heart…

It’s all the same. Embrace YOU

*

Take two deeper breaths, in your own time

Exhale, release judgement

Thank yourself for taking this time, this little Journey to Center.

**

**

Gently bring your awareness back to the room, relax the muscles in your face, relax your ears, your throat…

Inhale and release an audible  *s i g h* … feel gratitude…

Open your eyes slowly and sense how you feel.

Note any differences in your awareness.

In what ways do you feel differently from when you initially began?

Check whether you are holding an expectation about how you’re ‘supposed to’ feel. 

Stay curious and see if you can identify what arrived into your mandala.

Do you feel differently just from reading through the guided prompts? How?

**

LISTEN to your HEART

*RESOURCES

Mosaic from the Mind’s Eye with Lillian Sizemore.  Some student explorations can be seen here.

If you’re curious about classes and want to be informed, please state your interest in an email to Lillian here.

Pema Chodron’s story may surprise you. Her teachings are invaluable in helping to find Peace within while dealing with the inevitable discomforts of life,  pointing the way from neurosis into sanity. I honor my teacher, Mare Chapman, who has shown me the way, so many times.

Pema Chodron Foundation

A couple favorites:

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advise for Difficult Times

LetitRipple.org - Mobile Films For Global Change short film series,  launched in 2011 by The Moxie Institute.

The mosaics photos are details from the ancient pavements of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna Italy, by Lillian Sizemore.

Would love to hear from you!

Send me a comment –  let me know how deep listening works for you in life and art.

Tis the Season, and who couldn’t use a crash course on cutting the perfect paper snowflake?

I’m a geometry geek with a deficit in the calculation department, so I’m a big fan of Vi Hart. Her smart, snappy, creative take on geometry and mathematics is my kind of learning. Her unorthodox approach has taken off in a virtual wildfire, and now she’s a full-time ‘mathemusician’ with the Kahn Academy, the leaders in online math education.

Watch the 4 min. video then grab some scissors and awe your neighbors…Pay attention class, she’s on a roll!

Infinite possibility!