I have been enjoying the wonderful world of smalti. Smalti is the hand made glass that I fell in love with when I first started doing mosaics. I love the sculptural texture, the deep color, and it’s amazing reflectivity. I used it in my most recent work “Ravenna Dreams”, a 24”x24” mixed media piece using smalti and encaustic wax plus lots of 24k gold!
Ravenna Dreams was accepted into an exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum in which it won an award for Artistic Distinction. In this work of iconic images invoking the amazing ceilings in the cathedrals of Ravenna, I combined making a traditional mosaic with an encaustic inlay. It was exciting to do my first encaustic pour and then carve stars into the wax so I could then apply new colors into the blue wax field. After new wax was applied I carefully scraped back to the field of blue wax. The next challenge was to give it a “whisper kiss”, a term an encaustic teacher used to gently remove the scrape marks without melting my new stars into mush! Very exciting and satisfying when it works.
Another new technique to me is making my own Malmischiato. This is an Italian word meaning poorly mixed! I melt the little bits of smalti left over from making mosaics into a small molten ball then pinch it while glowing hot and pull a thread of glass.
How exciting to find a beautiful use for all those small bits of glass I have been saving. Here is a peek at the new jewelry and micro mosaic made from this technique.
You may have noticed over the years that there is nothing I love more than trying something new. I look forward to showing you during the tour. If you can not make the tour, you can see Ravenna Dreams at:
“Mosaics Today: Ancient Art Through a Contemporary Lens”
Juried Exhibition
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
Exhibition Dates: July 2nd – December 4th, 2022
