Jacque Towner is a mosaic artist working in a range of styles and materials. Her first love is art glass--after starting out in stained glass over 20 years ago she moved on to explore mosaics–enjoying their freedom after the more structured realm of traditional stained glass.
Her mosaic style has been described as "painterly". She uses glass to create mosaics with subtle hues and a sense of depth and mood. Each piece of glass is hand cut and perfectly shaped to fit with its neighbors to create scenes, vignettes and portraits that may each take months to complete.
From glass mosaics she has branched out to embrace Pique Assiette (from the plate), a playful medium full of possibilities to explore color and pattern. She also enjoys working with other materials in mixed media pieces that may contain costume jewelry, tile, and objects found scouring thrift stores. Switching between these various materials and techniques helps to keep the creative process fresh and endlessly interesting.
Mary Berk Gidzinski has enjoyed working with her hands throughout her life. Her early focus was fiber art: sewing, quilting, knitting, spinning and weaving. Once the world of mosaic captured her attention she spent a number of years studying with well-known artists in the US and abroad, working to hone her skills and develop her own voice. Experimentation with a wide range of materials and styles is the hallmark of her practice. More recently she expanded her glass work to include kiln-forming and flame-working.
Whether the medium is fiber, glass or stone Mary’s work explores the relationships between form, color, pattern and texture. She enjoys making functional and decorative art pieces that can be worn, placed in the garden or used in the home.
Beth Schmaltz specializes in contemporary hand stitching, felt making and mixed media as an expressive art medium. Her other interests are photography and traveling, which inspire her creativity. She facilitates a local “In Stitches” Club, creating a space for makers in the area to enjoy a few hours of stitching goodness and community each month. She also conducts local workshops and is always happy to share her expertise, sense of fun and exploration with her stitching community. Beth’s stitchery is playful, beautiful and functional. She also renders realistic portraits in stitchery, and is always pushing the boundaries on what might be possible!
Nancy Kline has always been interested in the arts. Since she discovered the wonderful world of mosaics 15 years ago she has explored a variety of techniques and styles, both modern and ancient, studying with masters in the US and abroad. She uses a broad range of materials to put her own spin on modern and traditional methods, with a playful twist.
Nancy’s motto is “Deconstruct then reconstruct”. She never smashes things; rather, carefully cuts materials to fit her plan. She likes to include nature--water, animals, and flowers--in her work, and also loves playing with Color, Textures, and Patterns. “I take it all and mix it up. I want to have fun.”
Patricia Reid has worked in several media over the past 20 years, including watercolor, pottery and mosaic. Pat’s first love was watercolor, and that informs her work in mosaic. Each of her mosaic pieces has echoes of the softness and fluidity of watercolor, and her current Cosmos series is a wonderful illustration of that blending of media to create a signature style. Much of Pat’s work also reflects her love of the art nouveau esthetic. Since Pat discovered mosaic she has been experimenting with “painting” in glass, trying to bring a sense of the beauty, wonder and mystery of life to her mosaic pieces.
Holly Flowers enjoys making functional art. Nothing makes her happier than finding a neglected treasure in a flea market, thrift or consignment store and transforming it into something beautiful and useful. She spent years as she was raising her family sewing, painting, wallpapering, and scrapbooking. Now she is putting those skills to use in rehabilitating neglected treasures, creating unique mosaic clocks and playing with pique assiette (from the plate) and glass on glass creations.