Karen Thompson: Flora and Fauna

Butterfly

Be very careful if you decide to embark on a DIY project. It could change your life forever. In 1987, fashion designer Karen Thompson was restoring her home and taught herself the ancient craft of mosaics. It became her career, replacing fabric and buttons with ceramic and glass. Working with a vast range of materials Thompson has developed a specialty in custom mosaic installations for both interiors and exteriors. This work has allowed her explore areas that she may not have discovered on her own. A commission to create two intricate wall panels depicting flower filled urns, inspired the idea for a series of botanical panels. Thompson remembers, “I needed a unifying template for the panels and I liked the idea of using a traditional illustrated manuscript page. This format allowed me to have a central main species surrounded by smaller flowers, insects and fanciful patterns.”

Fascinated by the world of flora and fauna, Thompson has built an extensive library, which enables her to research the details of botanical, entomological and ornithological species. Her many volumes of reproduced florilegia and historical botanical illustration have inspired both realistic and fanciful interpretations of petals and leaves. Thompson realizes, “I tend to favor illustrations over photographs for my research and inspiration. Illustrators articulate and simplify the specific components of their subject and I find this helpful in making decisions about the shapes of my tessera.” She will create the featured species in a material divergent from the recessive background, which enables her to emphasize color and texture. Each flower’s Latin name is heralded on a flowing banner and minute drolleries flutter around the central plant. Using a bevy of luxurious materials Thompson replicates the natural world with nature’s own treasures; semi-precious gems, fossils, glass, marble, and onyx.

  Spider Lilly on Blue Square

An interior designer admired Thompson’s botanical panels and commissioned her to create custom inserts for a new residence in Napa, California. After researching the local flora, Thompson created mosaics for five niches featuring native species. A vine or branch trails along the top of each arch and a delicate winged insect hovers near each iris, lily, clarkia, delphinium, and blazing star. A random cut Israeli stone, which had been specified in another area of the home, became unifying background field tile. Thompson happily reports, “The clients were very pleased with the mosaics and had the original lamp shades on the light fixtures replaced with smaller ones to expose more of the mosaics!”

It was a natural evolution that brought Thompson from her botanical series to a parade of vivid insect tiles. With a silky black background of honed marble, the bugs are elegant and bold, their true neon colors reflecting Thompson’s epiphany that “the colors in the insects are indeed fairly representational to those naturally occurring. There are amazing and outrageous colors found in nature!” The tiles are one inch thick and designed to be displayed individually or as a group.

What’s next for Thompson? Her library of ornithology books has increased lately, and we know that could only mean one thing. New bird panels will soon take flight.

Design Resource: Archetile

Ilana Shafir: Spontaneous Mosaics

 Mosaic Garden and House.

Born in the city of Sarajevo in 1924, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ilana Shafir knew from an early age she was an artist, though her parents were less than enthusiastic. As Shafir remembers, "In those days to be an artist was not a proper career choice for a woman." Her studies at the High School for Architecture were disrupted by the Nazi invasion of 1941. Shafir and her family escaped to the small town of Kula, where they miraculously found protection. No one gave them up, not their neighbors, not the Italian nor even the German soldiers. Shafir painted while in hiding, using old book covers for canvases. She painted landscapes and villagers, and traded her paintings for food.  Years later she discovered that both the Italian commander and the local priest had dedicated themselves to saving her family. She insists that "most people, if given the choice, would choose to be kind and humane."

Peacock.

Shafir continued her studies at the Art Academy in Zagreb, Croatia before emigrating in 1949, at the age of 25, to the coastal town of Ashkelon in Israel.  She processed the incomprehensible Holocaust and the loss of her extended family with pen and ink, drawing portraits of arriving immigrants. When her sadness was exhausted, Shafir began to explore the beautiful physicality of her new country, both in watercolor and mosaics. The two media are an unlikely pairing. Shafir’s watercolors are ethereal creations of opulent gardens and fantastical creatures. She started with a mono print of abstract stains and drew over the field of colors independent of their abstract shapes until distinct images emerged and every spot of color was defined. It is an unforgiving process that allows no corrections. Shafir credits her years of working in watercolor with providing her the confidence she required to develop her intuitive method of working in mosaic.

Ilana Shafir’s Mosaic Garden

(video)

After a lifetime of expressing herself in paintings, drawings and ceramics,  Shafir has dedicated herself for the last 20 years to the creation of fine art and architectural mosaics. She works in a garden of ingredients: natural stone, translucent glass, handmade ceramic, rejected sculptures, cast off dishes donated by neighbors, broken tile, Italian smalti, and smooth Mediterranean seashells and pebbles. Buckets of materials litter her studio, sorted by provenance, a choice that acknowledges their intrinsic value of origin. Her method, which she calls "spontaneous mosaics," hinges on the respect paid to each individual element. Working without preconceived ideas, sketches or drawings, Shafir places an assorted palette of materials on her work surface. Then, she listens. She uses her eyes and ears and her finely tuned sense of the relationship between inanimate objects to allow a synergy to develop. She likens this moment, when two elements become "united and inseparable," to a mosaic "kiss," the recognition of a chemistry between two formerly unrelated objects. "I see it with my eyes, but mainly I feel their natural attraction to each other." Pieces are chosen, moved, added, rejected, and played with until she is satisfied with their dialogue. Only then are they glued in place. Following this methodology Shafir creates radically textured, brilliantly colored worlds, inhabited by a stunning life force.

Birds in Garden.

At 87, Shafir still travels the world teaching her spontaneous method, encouraging students to discover unexpected solutions. In October, the  Association of International Mosaic Artists and the municipality of Ravenna, Italy will honor Shafir with a solo exhibition at the Biblioteca Classense. This is tantamount to ordaining her the matriarch of contemporary mosaic. The poet Yossi Gamzou said, "there are people with hearts of stone and there are stones with human hearts." Ilana Shafir has given heart to an ancient craft. In her powerful hands it has become a modern art.

Design Resource:

Shafir Art
Ravenna Mosaico Exhibition

Mark Bulwinkle: Tile Stripped Bare

 The Vacationers.

At first glance the artistic world of Mark Bulwinkle appears happy. Animals cavort, flowers bloom, a boy has hearts for eyes, the sun shines. The cartoon like images seem to be laughing at us, as if there is some private joke incised into each of them. Upon closer inspection, an energy emerges with manic overtones. We notice that a cat is blind, a dog appears rabid, a grin seems more like a grimace, and a trio of menacing beasts swallow each other whole. The flat, graphic images in Bulwinkle’s ceramic art emerge from his background in printmaking. From paper to ceramic, by way of steel and rust, the journey’s narrative imagery is rooted in the perennial perspective of a thirteen-year-old boy, crafted by an adult.

Bulwinkle left his Massachusetts home in 1968, eventually landing in San Francisco. He painted houses, and was so successful that by 1972 he had saved enough to invest in real estate. Instead, he enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute. Eight short months later he received an MFA in printmaking. After starting work at the Bethlehem Shipyards welding "really big things" (as he refers to the ships he repaired), steel and the oxyacetylene torch replaced wood blocks and paper. What emerged were flat steel sculptures, elaborately produced, expressing a sardonic anarchy. Bulwinkle took to mild steel with the same immediacy as paper. He torched directly onto the steel without any preparatory work. "After all," he says, "steel is produced and behaves a lot like paper. It’s just a whole lot heavier and requires a tiny bit more persuasion, and some might say, masochistic determination."

His sensibilities, both confrontational and humorous, aligned him with William T. Wiley, Roy De Forest, Robert Arneson, and David Gilhooly, Northern California artists whose works are rooted in wit, playful imagery and popular culture. His Oakland home became a tangled forest of spontaneous steel sculpture. By default, he joined the ranks of the West Coast Funk movement. By 1987 the reclusive and irascible Bulwinkle was a full time artist. He sold his art to collectors and was exhibited in museums. He was also perhaps the first and only person to refuse an interview with Oprah. His desire, he said, "was to be an artist, not a celebrity."

Lover Boy.

Ceramic, in many ways the antithesis of steel with its soft, malleable character, also requires fire to complete its life cycle. Bulwinkle credits ceramic instructor Richard Shaw at the Art Institute with teaching him about clay. Not that he actually enrolled in Shaw’s class. He snuck into the ceramics studio around 2:00 AM and taught himself all he needed to know. Shaw wrote poster sized instructions and placed them around the room. All Bulwinkle needed to do was read and follow them. He would leave the studio around 7:00 AM as the earliest students were arriving. He never got caught.

His first ceramic tiles were slip cast molds using an unconventional process to create forms that were so dimensional and intricate that the multiples were often mistaken for originals. He started with a series of phallic bugs, which morphed into tableaux of literal, wounded eroticism. He also created his own steel and wood tile making technique, though he eventually settled on a hydraulic mold process. He carves directly into leather hard clay, creates a mold and then forms the tile with a hydraulic press of his own making. He considers this repetitive process meditative. Influenced by the Bauhaus principle of melding machinery and craftsmanship to create products with both physical and artistic integrity, he feels that, "like a good brick," his tiles democratize his art.

Julie.

All of Bulwinkle’s art is autobiographical. A friendship with a female bartender justly proud of her ample breasts sparked a conversation about copyrighting them. In the tile "Julie" you’ll find the copyright symbol nestled quietly in her cleavage. When asked about his original inspiration for becoming an artist, Bulwinkle replies, "Vietnam." Though as the years go by he admits, "it is more and more difficult for those younger than myself to imagine what that means. For me it still feels like yesterday."

Bulwinkle has experimented with glazes, but now prefers his tiles plain and unadorned. It is in the raw that they most resemble the spirit of his steel work. He points to a sculpture in the yard and says, "Just because this piece of steel plate is rusty, doesn’t mean it’s recycled. It just means that it’s rusty. I let it rust because that’s what steel does." The colors of his unglazed tiles vary in shades of brown depending on where they sit in the kiln. Because that’s what stoneware does. Pity the well-meaning admirer who compliments him on the patina of his surfaces. The Latin etymology of "patina" is shallow dish. There is nothing remotely shallow about the man or his art, and there is no patina in Bulwinkleland.

Design Resource:  http://www.markbulwinkle.com/

Jacqueline Moore: A Painter’s Tale in Tile

Portuguese Tile

An art history scholar and painter, in 2009 Jacqueline Moore found herself “anxious, afraid, stunted in creativity and at a crossroads.” The journey that began in England and had brought her to Southern California, led one afternoon to a garden in Montecito. She was strolling amidst lush plantings, breathing air fresh from a recent rain and captivated with what she considered “wee art works”: old hand painted tiles that dotted the landscape. Moore had an epiphany on that sunlit stroll. Using her extensive knowledge of art history, design and architecture, her virtuoso skill with a brush, near forensic study of materials, and trust in her artistic voice, she began creating decorative tiles. As an expert in Restoration and Conservation in Decorative Antiquity, her chosen substrate was wood, a material she knew intimately.

Working with tile industry veterans Moore discovered the process that would enable her to create a durable tile in Baltic Birch that would provide the canvas for her elegant painted imagery. Created in as many as 20 layers, each tile is interspersed with paints and sealants that protect the surface and edges. Moore likens it to a “lasagna” effect with striations that create an impermeable patina. Traversing decorative ideology, Moore draws inspiration from the styles, movements and artists that captivate her imagination. She attributes her sense of balance and graceful proportion to a Palladian symmetry and draws courage from German Expressionism. Moore works viscerally, allowing the patterns and colors to essentially “choose themselves.”

“Each tile is emblematic of an emotional response,” she says, “They don’t trace anything in particular, nor as a pictorial rendering of something existing somewhere else, but are in fact recordings, captures, of an emotional reaction to an experience.”

Monkey Harlequin

The French 17^th century painter Antoine Watteau figures prominently in her design choices, which harmonize spontaneity with detailed execution. The evidence of folly is seen in the Commedia Dell’Arte series, populated with Moore’s delightful characters. Each rustic wood tile with a worn gesso base is overlaid with a meticulous figure in Delft inspired blues with umber and ocher oil washes. The Monkey Harlequin prances into the Rococo of the 18^th Century, he is Italian Commedia meets Singerie style by way of Tim Burton.

The Seated Bird.

In the Rococo-Chinoiserie series the wood base is distressed and then painted with a red underlay and a Black crackled topcoat. Distressed and worn gold leaf is applied to create borders and motifs. The Brighton tiles are atmospheric in mood with umber and ocher washes and a silver leaf ground coat. The delicate hand-painted botanical scenes are subtle and ephemeral. There is historical reverence in Moore’s textured interpretations. She believes the tiles are conceived in ”truth and fully fledged joy” while their presentation is “nuanced, storied, worn and with tales to tell.” Listen closely.

Design Resource: Jacqueline Moore

ALSIO Design, LLC: Spatial Patterns

Visualization of Proposal for the MTA.

Bobby Silverman thought he wanted to be a social geographer, the study of spatial patterns, investigating how and why we live and work where we do. On the way to getting his degree, he took a detour to Japan. There he witnessed the daily use of beautiful handcrafted objects, born of traditions that were thousands of years old. He became an apprentice to the master potter Samejima Saturo. What might have felt serendipitous at the time was actually, according to Silverman “preordained.” His family had actively collected antiques and decorative objects. The Japanese ritual of utilizing art that was functional felt familiar to Silverman.

Shoji Red and Gold Drip Ceramic Tile.

Returning to America, Silverman received his Master of Fine Arts from Alfred University and embarked on a career in ceramic exploration that has spanned 30 years.

“With an intimate understanding of the medium and its process, I tend to think of solutions that are idiosyncratic to the material.” Working out of his Brooklyn studio, Silverman established Alsio Design, named for the components of clay-alumina, silica and oxygen.

Silverman utilizes complicated glazing techniques to achieve translucency and emulate gravity. In the Shoji series the diffuse applications of color create a diaphanous lyrical surface. Employing drips, the abstract floral motifs appear to both bloom and wilt, evoking the passage of time. Like the painted Shoji panels Silverman discovered in Japan, the tiles integrate the artistic and functional, a critical component of Silverman’s work.

 Versailles’ Gold Tile (detail).

The Versailles Collection melds Silverman’s consummate skill by utilizing the technical and aesthetic properties of ceramic. Taking three years to develop, the elegant tile is realized only in metallic glazes, which maximize the reflectivity of the dimensional effervescent bubbles. Light catches each rounded orb, a toast to the 17^th century royal chateau where the treaty was signed to protect the provenance of French champagne.

 Braille ceramic art in residential setting.

Silverman explains, “The Braille, Morse, Binary, and bar codes all reflect a fascination with the visual representation of information, a manifestation of my interest in geography and art.” He creates phenomenological based designs integrating the sense of touch. Braille tiles celebrate poetry and color. A proposal for the MTA subway integrated Morse code translations of the approximate 180 nationalities that live in Queens. The floor tile merged stories of immigrants translated in Braille. Silverman mandated tiles for the vaulted ceiling similar to Spanish architect Rafael Gustavino’s patented technique. The purpose of this rich and tactile design was to celebrate the immigrant population that uses the subway daily. Braille and Morse code are two visual interpretations of language added to the multiplicity of native dialects spoken by commuters. Amidst this Mecca of culture and narrative, Silverman still seems intent on understanding our connections to place. His ceramic tiles, elevated to artistry, provide the patterns.

Design Resource: Alsio Design

Art of Board: From Tailslide to Tile

 Art of Board Kitchen Backsplash (detail) – tiles cut from old, discarded skateboards.

Scratched, dented, smashed, and abused, what to do with skateboard relics that are too damaged to carry their intrepid riders? Rich Moorhead appreciated the dense 7-ply laminated maple, the graffiti inspired graphics, and turned up tails. Where others saw broken sports equipment destined for landfill he saw an authentic surface material. Experimenting with the tools of the construction trade, he utilizes scroll and ban saws, routers, drills and sanders to create tile in four shapes, brick, cube, border and orb. He sorts the tile pieces by color, form and size. This give a rhythm to the cacophony of pieces, the better to reconstruct walls, countertops, backsplashes, cladding and retail displays.

The art of assembling each custom installation is the meditative stage of the process. Working within the measurements of the finished project the mesh-mounted tile is laboriously placed. Moorhead starts with what he calls the “ugly” tile, usually gashed and devoid of color. They become the field, balancing dense blacks and primary colored pieces, which he adds to create flow and interest. Every deck he uses is distinct. They bear the incidents of the skater, a tumbled caballerial, a miscalculated nose slide, an attempted kick-flip.

 Beautiful details: Tile composition from recycled skateboards.

When Moorhead was skating he explains, “We owned our decks for longer periods of time. Our riding was less harsh on the boards. Today decks wear out before the enthusiasm for skating is over. Typically the broken decks are returned to the skate shops where the trucks and wheels are removed, and the obsolete decks are thrown away.” Moorhead has changed all this with his I Ride I Recycle program. Partnering with skate shops and parks across the country, the used decks are now sent to Art of Board headquarters in Hanover, Pennsylvania where they receive a second life as wood tile. Art of Board even has a “mail back program” which allows the decks to be sent to Moorhead free of charge, another incentive to participate.

Finished with sanded grout, the tile is being used in residential and commercial applications. What on first glance looks like a vibrant colored mosaic, is upon closer inspection an energetic expression of an irreverent sport that has been with us since the fifties. When Moorhead was commissioned to create tile cladding for a square column at Life Rolls On, a subsidiary of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, he integrated “positive orbs.” He searched his bins for life affirming words and images, cut them out in circles and placed them strategically amongst the carnival of scarred tiles. He also included a Superman logo in homage to the enduring Reeve film legacy.

 Skateboard tiles used to give an interesting and uplifting detail to an architectural element.

Skateboards are designed to be functional and illustrative, at Art of Board their purpose is sustained, without injury.

Design Resource:

Art of Board

Marie Gibbons: Tactile Memory Tile

 Installation: “Natural Desire to Climb”

Jack and the Beanstalk could do worse than to depend on the “Natural Desire to Climb” series of tile by Marie Gibbons to reach his lofty treasure. Inspired by the exhibit titled Ladders, for which the series was intended, the 5” square sgaffito tiles offer a toehold into the imaginative realm of Gibbons’ memory and experience. Her interest in the organic form resulted in creating plant-type imagery as ladders. The black velvet under glaze is revealed and also scraped away. Gibbons manipulates her tiles by sketching directly onto the surface, pushing up from the bottom of the slab and pressing down from the top while the clay is leather hard. The high relief and ornate detailing create intricate patterns, dimension and whorls of energy.

 Ceramic Tile Detail: “Red Pods”

“Red Pods” and “Spiral Tree Branch” continue the exploration with organic forms. Both 12” square tiles are finished in acrylic washes and sealed with paste wax. Gibbons works directly on the tile surface, the process is immediate and spontaneous. Her post-fired finishes are a rich palette of verdant hues. They are the colors of lush forests and ripe red berries.

 Ceramic Tile Detail: “Spiral Tree Branch”

Gibbons had an artistic epiphany sixteen years ago. “I discovered clay in 1995, and when I did everything else took a step back. I had found more than just a medium, I found my MUSE.” The internationally exhibited artist, who also creates figurative sculpture, has a “self directed” education. Using memory and the reflection of her own experiences, she feels the continuum in her work is that “it speaks from my life.” The box tile Crow Triptych, entitled “The Journey,” is a stream of consciousness with unintelligible language scrawled in the background. The crow carries an incomplete fortune; “You will enjoy many successful…” leaving the viewer to insert their relevant desire.

 Tile Series: “Urban”

Gibbons took to the street to create her “Urban” tile series. Rolling slabs on city streets, she memorialized the debris of sidewalks: manhole covers, cracks, and asphalt joints. The 5” square fired slabs were washed with black acrylic, which was then scrubbed off to reveal the white clay body. The gritty abstractions that remain are a tactile memory of every street Gibbons has traversed. Growing up on Long Island, Gibbons balances urban reality with the beaches and more natural environment of her childhood. Both co-exist and inspire work that is derived from the freedom to explore.

Design Resource: Marie Gibbons

Susan Tunick: The Color of Clay

Ceramic artist Susan Tunick has a penchant for scale and surface. All of her creations, site-specific sculptures, mosaic murals and individual bricks and tiles are testaments to architecture. The surfaces are intricately laced, lush in color and texture. Studying architectural ornamentation has given Tunick a heightened awareness of edges, shadows and context-both physical and historical.

 Mt. Top Trio: Rouge (side 2). Dimensions: 46 1/2” x 41” x 15 3/4” wide.

Tunick was inspired to work spontaneously on her recent site-specific commission, Mt. Top Trio: Vert, Violet & Rouge. Located on a 600-acre Vermont farm, the land is fertile with wild flowers and grasses, pear, apple and plum orchards. There are three sculptures that provide permanent landscapes of color. The sides of each organic shaped cedar sculpture are clad in ceramic tile. Each side of clay bands were created at the same time to insure that they would all shrink at the same rate and fit in their respective place. Tunick chose a completely new glazing method that allowed her to “build the colored surface from one firing to the next.” She allowed the color to evolve by glazing non-adjacent elements. By staggering the glazing, she could watch it blossom, a process Tunick compares to “the way a pointillist painting was created.”

Detail of Mt. Top Trio: Violet (side 1). Dimensions: 53 1/2” x 36” x 16 1/2 “ wide.

There is a mesmerizing quality to the sculptures. The trio of forms reverberate color perhaps most vividly when seasons are harsh and nature is devoid of any strong hues. Inspired by haystacks found throughout the countryside, Tunick says, “I didn’t want the shapes to be so symmetrical. Thus, I felt that adding curves and some type of opening in the center could work well. The tile bands reiterate the circular motion of the haystacks – around and around and around!”

 Blue Double Screen. Dimensions: 6” x 6” x 3/4”.

On a smaller scale are Tunick’s perforated tiles and brick units. Both forms explore dimension. The perforated tiles are built with layers revealing surprising glimpses of pattern and depth. The perforations are witty reminders to both inspect and respect what lies beneath the facade.

 Cranberry Double Screen. Dimensions:  6” x 6” x 3/4”.

Tunick explores the rectangular brick by forming them in wooden molds, stacking and carving them. Constructed of thick hollow backed slabs glazed in radiant colors, the pedestrian brick is elevated to iconic status. Used throughout the world for thousands of years as a humble building material, Tunick has given reverence to the shape by invigorating the surface with color and texture. The bricks vary in depth, creating shadows in their concave spaces and staggered edges. Tunick’s bricks are investigations of architectural masonry in a way that Vitruvius could have never imagined.

As President of Friends of Terra Cotta, a preservation organization devoted to protecting historic and architectural ceramics, Tunick has studied clay in architecture for over 25 years. She is invested in “seeing ceramics re-integrated into our environment…into landscape, interiors and into the facades of new buildings.” Her work represents this evolution precisely. 

Design Resource:  Susan Tunick

Bella Vista Tile: Material Alchemy

“Cascade Dream”.

Lisa TeviaClark has immersed herself in the material language of her medium. For the past thirty years she has experimented with clay and the alchemy of heat, salt, ash, minerals, and glazes. With her husband James Clark, she established Bella Vista Tile in 2003, as both a limited production studio and a laboratory. Her careful study of ancient Chinese wood ash glazes provides the inspiration for a contemporary interpretation. Every tree specimen, from Bull Pine to Madrone, interacts with the earth in its own way, resulting in an ash that is completely unique. More than fifty glazes adorn the tile collections, supporting TeviaClark’s desire "to make many different visual realities with tile."

Making their own molds, hand pressing the clay, mixing and developing custom glazes, glazing by hand, carving and impressing bas relief patterns, together with the intimate and delicate dance of high firing, contributes to the artisanal nature of the tile. Originally creating hand thrown vessels, platters and tableaux (clay icons), TeviaClark transfers the individual nature of her former art into the character of her tile. Each is complete and has the potential to transform the space in which it resides. "I usually get a strong sense of what our tile can bring to the atmosphere," she says, "what our tile can contribute. I’m very aware of how our tile becomes part of the place."    

A visit several years ago to hot glass artist David Goldhagen resulted in bringing home buckets of glass, broken shards, powders, chunks, the raw materials with which to experiment and ultimately to give birth to a new collection. "Fascinations" brings together porcelain and glass. It consists of delicate carvings, bas-relief dimensionality, matte and metallic glazes together with fragments of glass. Melted and merged, when fired, each tile is a window of light and a well of saturated color. They are reminiscent of stained glass but with light glowing from beneath, an effect made possible by the variable reflective depths of the glass. 

 “Denim & Carnival” glass on Porcelain tile.

When she saw that customers were reproducing sample boards as kitchen focal points, TeviaClark was inspired to create elaborate panels incorporating stones, gems, pearls, and ceramic medallions. Ornate, richly colored mosaics, they offer malleable concepts for materials and textures that invite close observation.

“Mosaic Bouquet”.

The work of Bella Vista Tile is an antidote to the demise of beauty in the world. "I see that beauty is diminishing in the world. More and more, spaces feel stark and oppressive. When I encounter something beautiful I feel human and somehow cared for. I want to create art that speaks to and gives comfort to the souls of sensitive people." Encouragingly, she adds, "I believe we are all sensitive people."

Decor Resources:

Bella Vista Tile: Lisa TeviaClark & James Clark

The Bearable Lightness of Being: Jasna Sokolovic

“Two Birds in Cherry Tree”

Jasna Sokolovic left her native Yugoslavia in 1994, venturing to Granville Island, Vancouver. Her architecture studies in Sarajevo, the war torn capitol, came to an end, but her education resumed in Canada, where she focused on ceramics. In clay she found it possible to meld her interests in architecture and sculptural forms. Inspired by such European visionaries as Gaudi and Hundertwasser, Sokolovic adapted their interest in facade and illusion allowing her work to present itself as layers of visual and conceptual sentiment. Her long journey is often portrayed symbolically with birds representing "fragility and liberty, taking off, falling down and covering distances."

“Possibly, Maybe”

Her art is also concerned with relationship: tender proclamations of love, naive questions of remembrance, imploring admonishments to "stay close." The tiles reveal, as she says, "the narratives of my life. I am the storyteller, somewhere in the midst of this ricochet." Although Sokolovic has a complete thought in mind, the tiles contain only fragments of sentences, often with individual words barely visible. She tempts us to finish the narrative. She leaves us space to participate in this process with visual and linguistic coquetry. Her symbols, often the sweet stuff of childhood, are playful and innocent. When words and images collide, there is often a subtext, in the midst of cotton candy pinks and periwinkle blues, of yearning and fragility. Her self-portrait is sutured, chairs are empty and the wire is barbed.

 “Girl with Sparrow”

Sokolovic works directly on wet clay and bisque. On clay she silk screens and impresses marks. On bisque she applies glazes, underglazes, ceramic pencil, and more silk screening. Most of the tiles are cut from slabs. She considers this process analogous to journaling. Her "quick and loose style" adds a quiet vulnerability to the story she is sharing.

In 2009, Sokolovic was awarded the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, which enabled her to travel to Mexico for a residency at La Ceiba Graphica. There she studied print making. Next, she traveled to Xalapa and Oaxaca to meet with local potters and artisans. That experience shifted her color palette to more intense shades. It also expanded her sculptural vision to include Milagros, deeply personal figures embracing a tradition of healing in a puppet-like form.

Recently, Sokolovic teamed up with her husband Noel O’Connell, also a ceramic artist, for a collection called These Gray Days. Throughout the process of creation, they maintain a dialogue. The pressed moulded tiles resulting from this collaboration include many of the themes Sokolovic has explored on her own, but they also emphasize architectural motifs. Tiles from These Gray Days are exhibited as Fragments and Patterns, their placement and relationship to each other being an integral part of their conception.

"Open Your Eyes, You’ll Be Fine."

"I like to keep some lightness in whatever I do. I believe that such a point of view helped me through hard times in my life." Scrawled on a piece of clay, surrounded by decorative scrolls, a small bird and an empty shirt, we read: "Open your eyes, you’ll be fine."

Design Resource:
Jasna Sokolovic
These Gray Days