From Many Pieces

from many pieces

a mosaicist fashions

art all of one piece

This is a detail from one of the mosaics in Marissa's upcoming show, which will be opening next week in the gallery at the Quogue Library.   The shows presents a whole new direction for her work. For the last few years, while her easel and brushes have been gathering dust, Marissa has been mastering this new medium, making her art by painstakingly assembling images from little pieces of glass and stone, along with assorted other materials (like a handy pair of chopsticks) thrown in for occasional special effect.  

The photo above is a closeup from one of my favorite pieces in the show called Breaking Through.  I love the suppleness of the line of the dark glass as it flows through the image.  It's so fluid it looks as if it had been drawn by hand using charcoal or a brush, but let me assure you -- as I've seen with my own eyes -- mosaic art involves a far more laborious process than that.  This particular piece was inspired by patterns in the ice that Marissa  noticed one winter morning while walking the dogs, but I can't help but see this abstract pattern in figurative terms, either as acrobats, monkeys in a tree or perhaps some of our East Quogue neighbors engaged in the ecstasy of a St. Vitus dance.

ten thousand pieces

on display in fractured ice

searching for gestalt

Appropriately enough, the show is called In Pieces and it will be on display at the Library for the whole month of August.  Stop by and see it if you can.  It's a unique and very contemporary addition to the incredibly rich and long-standing tradition of mosaic art. 

Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces,

the unity of the soul would never be shattered.

And the wider and more numerous the fissures

on the surface, the more unity lies in the depths.

                            Carl Jung

* * * * *

Postscript: Marissa just returned from hanging her new show.  "This may sound funny,"
she said to me, "but this is the first time in my life I don't feel ashamed by my work." 

That doesn’t sound at all funny to me.  I think a lot of artists are familiar with that sense
of feeling ashamed or disappointed with their finished work.  When you complete a
project or piece, there’s often a nagging sense that you could have done better,
that your work is somehow inadequate.  In part, it results from having looked long
and hard enough to see the flaws in whatever it is you were making.  

But part of the reward of getting older is that you grow to be more accepting of yourself
and your work.  Perfection recedes as the goal and doing the best you can do comes
within reach  There’s more clarity and less noise in your head.  A mature artist has
earned the advantage of feeling satisfied with work that’s complete.

The real challenge as you get older is staying productive, sustaining your creative energy,

and having the strength to wrestle with new ideas.  By all these measures, Marissa’s

new show is a real banger – nothing to be ashamed of for an artist  of any age.