For the next three months, the Art and Aesthetics Team is privileged to host an exhibition of the work of our own Lin Jovanovic in the UUCM library. Lin is a mosaic artist. She takes broken pieces of pottery or tile and uses them to create something new, something even more beautiful. That process was the theme for the month of November, so It seems especially appropriate to be showing her work at this time. Lin’s art work will be on display by the second Sunday of December, but her official reception isn’t until the 15th. Please have a sneak peek if you just can’t wait, and then join us on Dec. 15 to celebrate her talent and creativity and to ask all your burning questions.
Here, in her own words, is Lin’s story:
I took my first mosaic class over 25 years ago and I was hooked! What a blast to break up tiles with a hammer and challenging my brain to construct a design with those broken pieces and the spaces in between.
Career and family limited the time I could put into my art, but moving up to Grass Valley and finding a house that had a ready-made studio and a storage area (affectionately called The Hoard) took away many limitations and opened me to explore and deepen my skills and passion for this art form.
I work with almost any material that takes my fancy – some common place in this work like tile, stained glass, smalti (small bits of mosaic glass), and dishes – some more fanciful like figurines, nuts, metal bits, fused bobbles, stones, or shells.
In looking at my work to prepare for this exhibit, I noticed my drive to master many techniques and mediums in mosaic art. Two D is one expected choice, but I love 3-D and sculptural expressions, the magic of the light of glass on glass mosaics, the whimsy of pique assiette* (crockery), the way a color freedom mosaic bends the mind, and the wonder of micro mosaics to fascinate. For me these are all ways to play and to bring an experience to the viewer that is visceral and sparks curiosity. I appreciate you taking a look.
*From goldbugmosaics.com: “Pique assiette or trencadis is a style of mosaic that incorporates ceramic shards, broken dishes and other found objects into a design. While traditional mosaics used small cubes that were relatively uniformly shaped, pique assiette or trencadis tends to use nonuniform pieces. The term pique assiette has a French origin and various sources say it means ‘stolen plate’ or ‘broken plate.’ It also refers to someone who is a ‘scrounger’ which of course fits because most pique assiette art is created with recycled or ‘scrounged’ materials.”