Heart and Soul Meets Brain and Hand

Those still wondering where to draw the distinction between craft and art in mosaics need look no further than Terra Incognita: Mosaic Explorations, a small group exhibition of contemporary mosaic art expertly co-curated by Karen Kettering Dimit and Rachel Sager Lynch and presented July 10 through August 26th at The Gallery at Penn College, Pennsylvania College of Technology, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

How grateful I am that I made the drive to central Pennsylvania to see this exceptional exhibition in person. The show provided an in-depth look at the recent work of five artists: JeanAnn Dabb, Karen Kettering Dimit, Cynthia Fisher, Yulia Hanansen, and Rachel Sager Lynch. Five distinct voices, all committed to pursuing their individual investigations of the world in the language of mosaics.

For those who couldn’t make the trip, Nancie Mills Pipgras provides an excellent overview of the show with splendid photos on the website of Mosaic Art Now (http://www.mosaicartnow.com/2012/07/terra-incognita/). Additional information on the exhibition can be found at www.pct.edu/gallery.

Miss Cucuteni 2011, one of several of Karen Kettering Dimit's Subway Goddesses, 
greets gallery visitors. On the near wall, five mosaics
from her series, NYC Water Towers: A Mosaic "Sketchbook" 

The show was unified by a guiding sensibility in that each artist used the medium of mosaics to explore worlds unknown—whether near (as in a rarely visited tract of forest or an overlooked facet of the urban landscape) or far (as seen in representations of historic or imagined maps, the subterranean earth, undersea environments, and outer space).

Yulia Hanansen explores galaxies, distant stars, and space travel in the language of mosaics.

In these small-format mosaics Hanansen uses rippled and layered glass and signature feather-shaped cuts to convey a cosmos teeming with energy and brilliant color.

Every work in the exhibit had the power of specificity, a meaning that transcended the virtuoso handling of color and texture and referenced a particular time or place or cultural current. The art was brave, original, fully thought out, and deeply expressive. There was plenty of variety in the formats: two- and three-dimensional work, sculpture that used mosaic only in part, interesting use of negative space.  It was fun to read the show for each artist’s self-professed wonky fascination with a topic of interest: archeology and anthropology, geology, geography and cartography, cosmic forces and scientific achievement, urban architecture, ancient vs. pop culture, and the natural environment. Because each mosaicist was invited to display a small body of work, you could see her engagement with a theme over time and get a good sense of what makes her work distinctive and important.

JeanAnn Dabb uses a variety of innovative formats to explore themes of geology and archeology. Her mosaics come alive with dramatic textures, light and shadow.  

Fossils, smalti, and stone were combined to magnificent effect in this Dabb mosaic,
Lower Bridger Formation: Howard's Beach, a detail of which is pictured here. 

 Because mosaic making is so labor-intensive, any piece is the product of thousands upon thousands of individual choices. That these choices can result in a work that is unified in its formal elements, expressive with the hallmarks of an individual style, and resonant with meaning was on full display in this show.

Rachel Sager Lynch's mosaics are rich with exquisitely modulated color and texture, as in
A Color Wheel: From Whitsett to Leiper's Fork. 

  

Another Sager Lynch mosaic, Light Out for the Territory, was one of several in the show
 that reflects her interest in cartography. Reading from the left, the rugged texture gives the land a wild, uncultivated aspect. Right of the river, an orderly andamento shows evidence of settlement. Here is technique in service of meaning. 

The mosaics were also simply gorgeous—teeming with color and abundant with a rich palette of materials, sensuous, touchable. I was sometimes transfixed by the color or texture of single stone or a single row of tesserae, a testament to the power of a finely made mosaic to draw you close. Traditional mosaic materials like glass, smalti, stone, marble, and ceramic were represented, as well as metals, fossils, shells, gemlike minerals, coal, repurposed industrial parts, and unusual found objects. Everywhere I looked I saw technical prowess as demonstrated by interesting juxtapositions and skillful transitions. And yet despite the ambition of each mosaic, the bold choices, there was also a welcome restraint, a sense of control. No “irrational exuberance” here, and the whole exhibit was better for it.

Cynthia Fisher's Textures, Fall demonstrates her powers of close observation and her ability
to reconstruct her impressions in jazz-inflected, color-infused mosaics that convey the variety and poetic beauty of her Massachusetts landscape.

In My World Fisher orchestrates the elements of landscape and atmosphere in a
stunning mosaic composition that captures a particular moment in time. 

The gallery configuration made for an exceptional viewing experience. The spacious floor plan, the signage, the lighting, even the background music all elevated the show. The gallery welcomed visitors with a brief video presentation narrated by JeanAnn Dabb on the history of mosaics and an overview of materials and techniques. This, along with a printed exhibition guide, helped those new to contemporary mosaics better understand and appreciate the art.

Mosaicists everywhere owe a huge debt to Karen Kettering Dimit for scoping out the opportunity at Penn College and for the thoughtful and sensitive way she and Lynch conceived and curated the show. It all came together in a first-rate slice of what's happening in American mosaics. To my mind, it was the best exhibition of contemporary mosaic art I've ever seen--intelligent, bold, thoroughly American in its scope and interests. I only wish it could be packed up and shipped to several more galleries around the country so more people could see it.

I know that following the 2011 exhibition in Ravenna, there’s been a lot of excitement in the field about the monochromatic textured mosaics that are all the rage in Europe (CaCO3, etc.) I admire these mosaics as well, but I hope that the next MAI exhibition at SAMA's 2013 conference won’t elevate the work of imitators of this style who are following the Europeans' example, herdlike, without the conceptual/philosophical backbone that inspired the original work. It seems to me that the mosaics of the Terra Incognita artists represents an equally valid mode of expression--one based on the power of color + texture + personal passion. The result are mosaics that reflect distinctly American concerns--our cityscapes, our fascination with scientific discovery, our seasonal variation, our history and archeology, our cultural icons, even our environmental disasters.

It’s an idiom equally worthy of celebration.

Karen Kettering Dimit and Damien Hirst: A New York State of Mind

In February I paid a visit to the Long Island City studio of my friend and fellow SAMA member Karen Kettering Dimit. An artist who uses mosaic as both a principal material in framed pieces and as a way to add color, texture, and meaning to some of her sculptural work, Karen works in a spacious third-floor space in a loft building filled with artist studios. The sunlight streams in through huge windows and the elevated train rumbles by at regular intervals.

One room of the studio is set up for display of completed pieces and storage of materials; a second room is a well-outfitted work space, anchored by sturdy tables and ringed by all manner of tools and equipment for cutting and polishing marble and mosaic making.

On entering the studio, my eye is drawn to a collection of powerful stone sculptures in the classic mode, most set above contrasting mechanical platforms. Karen has been sculpting in stone for a decade. The forms—depicting partial torsos, heads, and body parts emerging in polished perfection from the raw stone—are pared down, elegant, abstract. The size makes them easy to relate to; most are small enough to wrap one’s arms around. As a group, the sculptures are undeniably beautiful and invested with meaning. They evoke something lyrical, dreamlike, and timeless. Karen explained how she came to sculpture through an immediate connection to the material itself. “The stone just spoke to me, and said ‘do something.’” She answered that call with an awesome energy, insight, and talent. Some of the sculptures are deeply personal, tributes to loved ones facing illness and decline, but every piece conveys dignity and strength.

The sculptural work of Karen Kettering Dimit as displayed in her LIC studio. 

Given my interest in mosaics, I was eager to see the project on her work table: a new mosaic panel in her series depicting NYC water towers, those iconic structures that dot Manhattan’s skyline, perched atop every city building taller than six stories. Karen calls the series “a mosaic sketchbook,” because within the context of the project she uses her gifts as a mosaicist to address fundamental questions of form, composition, perspective, scale, color, texture, light and shade. She incorporates both humble and exquisite materials in these small-format framed panels. The newest mosaic in the series—a study in black, grey, and white, with a stormy sky—is a perfect example of Karen’s sensitive handling of materials.

Karen surrounded by smalti and minerals as she works on NYC Water Towers XII, a mosaic-in-progress. 

A few pieces from the series "NYC Water Towers: A Mosaic Sketchbook."

Another area of focus—one combining her feminist perspective with her interests in sculpture and mosaics—is her Subway Goddess Pageant series, a collection inspired by ancient sculptures of powerful women. With wit and imagination, Karen weaves together anthropology, history, and social commentary as she reimagines these totemic female forms as contemporary New Yorkers. Each modern goddess has a distinct personality and is posed above a smaller stone carving of its historic counterpart. The ancient goddesses—simple and unadorned—suggest a powerful life force; the subway goddesses—clad in exquisitely detailed mosaic that rewards careful inspection—suggest the vanity and materialism of today’s culture.

Karen with Miss Cyclades 2009. 

All of Karen’s artwork shows a thoughtful, disciplined mind at work and suggests the rewards that come from deep exploration of a single theme. This is what distinguishes a true artist: not just the production of art but the investment of meaning.

For more on Karen and close-up images of her art, see www.kkdimit.com.

Following lunch at LIC Market, a great café a couple of blocks from the studio, we took a short subway ride back to Manhattan, to Chelsea, where we spent the rest of the afternoon cruising the galleries. One destination was the Gagosian Gallery, which was featuring a major installation of the Damien Hirst spot paintings from 1986-2011. I had seen four paintings in this series at an exhibition at MOMA a few years ago, but now Karen and I were surrounded by dozens of canvases in a variety of configurations: thousands and thousands of precisely painted circles of color, some huge, some minute.

Damien Hirst
, Phe-Tyr, 2004, 
Household gloss on canvas,
140 x 156 inches  



© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2011.

Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Standing in this sea of color, I found myself mesmerized by the power of spots taken to an exponential dimension. We wandered through the rooms, getting lost in the paintings, enjoying the visual phenomena and marveling at their variety and complexity, given how simple the content is. I found enjoying the exhibition much more than I expected to—who could be immume to this color riot?—yet on the whole felt irritated at the artist himself. Hirst had come up with the big concept—creating a structure through which he could “pin down” the joy of pure color—and set the parameters for the program, but after he worked this series for some time he evidently became bored and moved on to other things. However, the public demanded more of his easy-to-like spots. And so more were produced. However, now after a certain point he turned the painting over to his assistants who made the creative decisions regarding the color sequences.

As someone who is deeply engaged mentally and physically with every minute decision in the course of making a mosaic, Hirst’s practice seems outrageously detached. I want to see the artist’s own hand in the final work, not feel the task of painting itself has been outsourced. It’s easy to dismiss Hirst as a relentless self-promoter, more showman than artist. Yet as much as I wanted to dislike the show for these reasons, I had to admit that the paintings themselves spoke to me, particularly when assembled in a large group and exhibited under ideal conditions. It was not only that spending time in a precisely ordered, color-rich universe lulled me into bliss. It was that a study of the series suggested once again the notion of the artist as problem-solver, the value in maintaining focus on a narrowly defined subject and mining it exhaustively. Not repetition. Penetration.

Andy Warhol was a visionary, a true original who set art on a new course. Yet much of his art was series-based and produced under workshop conditions. Do I respect him less for it? On the contrary, I accept his concept of multiples and all its implications and see it as central to his vision.

How will history judge Damien Hirst? A question to ponder as the Tate Modern in London gets ready for the artist’s first major retrospective, opening in April.