Interview with mosaic artist,
Marian Shapiro, continued.
What was the most difficult piece you have created
and why?
I think one where I didn’t really get it right
with the client, where it was very difficult to get us both pointing in
the same direction.
There’s a piece I’ve got called Ghost which was quite difficult
technically because it involved a lot of different mosaic techniques in
the same piece and I didn’t quite get it right either and there
was a bit where I had to scrape it off and start again. But I was very
pleased with the result and I know how to do it properly next time, which
is always useful. I don’t associate difficulty with it that much,
I mean I always find it interesting when you’ve got to learn something
new technically when you are doing things. Because I think it’s
very useful to be pushed outside your comfort zone. Otherwise you can
end up doing the same old thing again and again.
Actually piece I did when I went to Auckland to the master class, was
difficult technically but I wanted it to be, I chose something deliberately
that would push me and challenge me. Because I don’t normally do
that much representational work, so I decided that I would and that I
would do a face, as its one of the most difficult things you can do and
that I would do it all in shades of one colour. So that I was getting
the definition of the form, not with the colour of the materials but with
the way that the pieces flow when you put them together, the lines that
are made between the pieces, which in mosaic is called andamento. It’s
an Italian term, which means flow. So technically I think that’s
probably the most difficult thing I did but I did that on purpose. It
was a fascinating process because it was a small class and basically we
just able to sit there and pick at it until we got things absolutely right.
It was great and I think it really influenced what I’ve done since,
in terms of accuracy and sophistication of what I am doing, if that doesn’t
sound too big headed.
Also I was working on that with a material called smalti which is glass
fired at really high temperatures and if you go to Venice or Vienna or
Istanbul and you see mosaics in the churches there, smalti is what they
are made of. It’s a very traditional material and the glass has
a very high refractive quality so it just bounces light and it looks very
kind of luminous and reflective. Its wonderful stuff to work with and
I was working with that as well and I think that was the first piece I’d
done that was entirely in smalti, although I have done parts of mosaics
in smalti before. 
Ghost - Courtesy of Darian
Design
So is that different to glass fusing or is it
a similar process?
Yes it is, what they do is they take glass and they
colour it and then they fire it very high temperatures so its almost like
enamel. Some of it has lead or lead oxide in it and some of it is iridised
as well. It’s made in Italy traditionally and what they do is they
come out with literally this pizza of glass and then its cut into chunks
for mosaic artists and then we cut it further for use. Whereas glass fusing
is where you take different pieces of glass and you literally glue them
together and then you fuse them by firing them in a kiln. You know that
sort of dichroic jewellery you see around sometimes with the little glittery
glass things; those are fused glass. If you see glass bowls where you
have got say three colours in the same bowl, that’s done by fusing.
Basically what they’ve done is cut three shapes of glass. They’ve
put them over usually a clear glass base and you put it in a kiln and
it all melts together. So that’s fusing which is what I have been
doing to create little inserts for my mosaic. But that’s different
to the process that the Italians use to create smalti.
What are the largest and smallest pieces you
have made?
The smallest pieces are some that I am actually doing
at the moment for shows where I am doing sets of six where people can
either buy one individual piece or they can buy the whole lot and those
are 12cm square.
The biggest piece I’ve done so far would be two bathrooms, which
actually went to the UK. They were done here on fibreglass mesh and then
you cut them up for shipping, label them so the tiler can kind of put
the jigsaw back together at the other end. They were shipped to the UK
and installed in a bathroom in Oxfordshire. 
Roman "Twisted Rope" borders - Courtesy of Darian
Design
Are they the ones with lots of blue on your
site?
Yes. They are the twisted blue rope and some fish around
a shower. That’s probably the biggest in area. They are going to
be featured in an article in a magazine that’s coming out at the
end of October. Which I am quite pleased about.
A UK magazine or Australian?
No it’s Australian. My client in the UK, because
I had to check with her if it was okay to have it featured, she wants
me to send a copy of the magazine so she can leave it artfully on her
coffee table. Its an Australian magazine called Kitchen and Bathroom Style.
Mosaic art interview
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