A warm welcome to you! The first issue of new, independent magazine Mosaic & Glass will be published on 11 February 2022. Our wonderful writers and journalists have been interviewing inspirational mosaic and glass artists across the world. And we have artists writing beautifully about their journeys, projects and inspirations. Their articles have already started to arrive, so it won’t be long before you get to enjoy reading them too!
To whet your appetite, here are some snippets from just some of the interviews, features and artists’ articles from Issue 1 of the magazine. Don’t forget to pre-order or subscribe to secure a printed copy. Or you can choose to read a digital-page turning PDF or a fully immersive online version, from a device of your choice wherever you are in the world. In the meantime, enjoy this sneak preview and follow us on social media to enjoy more previews in the coming weeks…
INTERVIEW
Carrie Reichardt / ‘If you get a group of people together and they create and are happy, that’s when really positive things happen’
By Helen Miles
There is art, and then there is the artist. When it comes to Carrie Reichardt and her large-scale ceramic collages, however, there is an artist who wears her art on her sleeve. Boldly graphic, political, and colourful, her work is a statement, a rallying cry, and a commentary: notice the world around you, challenge, confront and speak up… Buy or subscribe to read the full four-page interview
INSPIRATION
Layne Rowe / ‘Angel wings represent freedom and fragility but with power, strength and protection’
By Catherine Rose
Glass artist Layne Rowe was inspired to conceive a glass sculpture that explores the way people have been affected by the Covid pandemic. Solace, a huge pair of stunning glass angel wings is both a tribute to the thousands who have died and to give their loved ones “a symbol of freedom, unity, strength and power”. With the piece Layne aims ‘to provide a focus for people of all faiths and none to contemplate the effects of the pandemic’. Buy or subscribe to read the full interview with Layne.
INTERVIEW
Terri Albanese / ‘I want the viewer to connect with my heart’
By Catherine Rose
Terri Albanese ‘paints’ pictures with glass with the aim of having a positive emotional impact. Her compositions feature vibrant colour, tactile form and a sense of rhythm. Taking her inspiration from the natural world and the symbolism of flowers, Terri’s glass paintings are, in her words, “an invitation to come with me, for just a moment – and walk with me through a garden”. Buy or subscribe to read the full interview with Terri.
ARTISTS WRITE
Piecing us together
By Kate Kerrigan
This project is a culmination of everything I love: art, travel, family and friends. For the past five months, I have been driving across the United Sates to visit friends and family, having them create a small abstract mosaic segment. Each of their contributions will be used to create a large mosaic. My vision of the final piece is a fabric of the life that I have woven, by all of the people who have touched it… Buy or subscribe to read the full article.
FEATURE
The graffiti mosaics changing the world
By Angela Youngman
Mosaics are popping up in the most unlikely places – filling in a hole in the road or pavement, on a bare wall or overlooking a cemetery. None have official permission to be there. This is graffiti art 21st-century style. Designed to raise a smile or make you think, or to bring colour and life into forgotten corners, it is proving immensely popular. Trails and maps showing the location of mosaic graffiti art are being followed avidly, and this unofficial artwork has even appeared in tourist guidebooks… Buy or subscribe to read the full feature, which includes interviews with Jim Bachor, Helen Miles and Will Rosie.
FEATURE
Murano’s first all-female glass furnace shatters the glass ceiling
By Rebecca Ann Hughes
In the small showroom of Chiara Taiariol’s hot shop on the Venetian island of Murano stands a collection of curvaceous ancient goddess statues. The voluptuous figures come in solid or blown glass and a range of colours and forms. They represent creativity, fertility and rebirth. But they also speak volumes about their creators; two women who are heralding a new era in the 1000-year-old tradition of glass on Murano… Buy or subscribe to read the full article.
INTERVIEW
Lost Iraqi art reappears in the mosaics of Michael Rakowitz
By Matt A Hanson
The visually disparate, conceptually contiguous artworks of Michael Rakowitz are like a freewheeling, multidimensional mosaic when contemplated as the sprawling sum of their many and eccentric parts. From makeshift homeless shelters to monumental antiwar sculpture, and grappling with everything from the Anatolian graveyards of the Armenian genocide to the demolished Bamiyan buddhas of Afghanistan, the diversity of his oeuvre can also be seen as a personal reflection of his seemingly divergent Arab-Jewish Iraqi-American identity and heritage… Buy or subscribe to read the full interview with Michael.
INTERVIEW
Helen Hancock / ‘I was in very dark place. Glass was the thing that changed that.’
By Catherine Rose
Irish artist Helen Hancock is the only known glassblower in the world to include human breastmilk in her pieces, which are designed to be objects of emotional healing. She originally studied glass-making at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin. Before graduating in 1998, Helen spent the summer in Seattle at Dale Chihuly’s famous hot shop, meeting inspirational artists and talking to them about native influence on glass design… Buy or subscribe to read the full interview with Helen.
INTERVIEW
Julie Sperling / ‘In creating my art I hope to bring people to a place of gentle discomfort’
By Angela Neustatter
You have the sense that a good deal more than gentle discomfort animates the spry, smiley, but utterly serious Julie Sperling, to focus her ravishing mosaic art on ways to jerk us into understanding cause and effect of our behaviour on our planet… Buy or subscribe to read the full interview with Julie.
ARTISTS WRITE
Imagination, play and art
By Karen Francesca
From an early age I found solace in my sketch books and diaries. I created imaginary worlds where I could live as I wished. I later discovered that these are just as important as any external reality. Some of this sublimation was manifest through crafts, some through growing plants… This is where I learned that transformation is possible; that things are not what they seem… Buy or subscribe to read Karen’s full article.
LOOK OUT FOR MORE PREVIEWS COMING OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA!