Interview with mosaic artist, Marian Shapiro, continued.

What would be your favourite part in the process of creating a mosaic?

Sometimes the design and sometimes just right at the end. I think I am an anomaly in this because I actually quite like grouting, not that all work is grouted. Lots of people hate grouting but I like it. The reason I like it is because its almost like developing a photograph, its that kind of final touch where if you are grouting a piece if you get the grout right it just pulls the whole thing together visually. There’s also something just very satisfying about finishing. I always think there should be a little ritual for the placing of the last piece, some little dance or a song or something. Especially when something has taken a long time and mosaic can be very meticulous and require quite a lot of patience and obsession. So there’s something very nice about going ‘okay I’ve done that, I’ve spent three weeks on this and you’re the last piece and now its done’.

I have noticed in your gallery pages online that you don’t just use tiles, and now we have talked about glass as well, are there any other materials have you used?

I use lots of things but I very rarely use ceramic tile. I use glass. I use smalti. I use marble a lot, which I hand cut. I use metal. I use millefiori, which is again Italian, and it means a thousand flowers, they’re those little things that look like beads with flowers in the centre. I have used plastic wire. I use unglazed ceramics; the rug is done in unglazed ceramic tile. Glass gems sometimes, I have used bit of old earrings when I have lost the pair. Resin occasionally, I’ve got some slabs of resin we give some quite interesting textural effects. And shattered safety glass, I go round with my little bag and collect it from bus stops, where other people have broken them, I hasten to add. Because it fractures, it doesn’t splinter, so if you use it you get this lovely fractured effect. In fact there are mosaicists that work in nothing else and they paint the backs or they paint underneath and stuff, which I don’t, but I have used it in sections of things, its beautiful stuff.

Fragment - Courtesy of Darian Design

Is there something else that you do differently to other mosaicists? Would that be the materials?

One of the things I really like about mosaic is that it has such variation in it. People are using similar materials and similar techniques and they come up with something completely individual. I think I haven’t seen anyone else here using fused glass and I also do use quite a lot of metal in things from time to time and I think that that also distinguishes my pieces.

Was there anything that you had a particular trouble with when you started?

Learning to cut with a hammer, it’s quite fun.

So you don’t just randomly smash things?

No, no you don’t just randomly smash things at all, there is a style of mosaic, which does involve kind of randomly smashing things, and I don’t do that one either. Actually if you do it well its very difficult, placing the pieces properly.
But learning to cut with a hammer was quite a challenge, which I am not entirely sure I have yet mastered. I can’t think of anything else really, I think that was probably the main thing. It’s on the whole quite a low-tech craft.

Mosaic art interview continued on next page
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