Jamie Tessler

Artist Statement: Jamie Tessler
Nature themes are an ongoing inspiration for my mosaic pieces. As an outdoorswoman, I marvel at the variety of color, shading, texture, density, and shapes of plants, woodlands, meadows, ledges, summits, and skies. I recognize, too, that what we call "wilderness" is land holding the scars of human activity, industrial damage, and the cumulative injuries of climate change. These tensions find their way into my work. When hiking, my feet must navigate the craggy, sharp, muddy, soft, and at times unpredictable three-dimensional substrates, an experience resonant with the physical and tactile experience of manually handling, cutting, breaking and shaping glass, stone, and other materials. These indoor and outdoor experiences complement each other, each fueling the passion for the other.

A projects starts with a fixed idea that quickly melts away and is replaced by intuition. I start with simple line drawings and then promptly ignore the lines once the voice of the tesserae (pieces of glass, stone, tile, ceramic, plate, other) form their own story and interact with each other. I am continuously experimenting to fulfill an idea; sometimes the strategy works as imagined, other times not at all or they morph into a new form. Mosaics lend themselves brilliantly to this way of creating, requiring continuous wrestling with the gifts and constraints of the material, and the remarkable ways the tesserae engage with natural light and spark ideas. While I am enticed by a wide range of mixed media, stained glass is most often at the center.

Mosaics captured my imagination later in life, ideas lingering for years before I set my first piece into mortar. I am mostly self-taught with some valuable time spent in workshops, notably with mosaic artist Cynthia Fisher. Stained-glass expert Daniel Maher introduced me to photo etching and fostered my affection and understanding of the wide range of glass materials. Original photographs taken while exploring the outdoors are the source for these etched components. Other work on family legacies draws from the black and white images inherited from my father, photographer Ted Tessler (1919-1981), who taught me from a young age how to see and appreciate light.

MA

United States