Trail Dreams/Beyond the Body
[SHORTER VERSION: “Trail Dreams/Beyond the Body” reflects the journey of my imagination during a time when health challenges derailed my ability to hike and explore mountain trails, forests and meadows. Piece by piece, I sought to manifest the hiking experience, with the goal of accessing those large feelings and a state of equanimity. "Trail Dreams/Beyond the Body" is both a meditation and a reconciliation, a reminder that an experience of wonder can be reached with or without an able body. }
{LONGER DESCRIPTION}
“Trail Dreams/Beyond the Body” reflects the journey of my imagination during a time when health challenges derailed my ability to hike and explore mountain trails, forests and meadows. Without the deep nourishment I experience from this relationship to wild places, I noticed that despair was lurking nearby. I longed for the feeling of curiosity and anticipation at new trailhead and the ever-shifting visual landscape, close and far. I missed the sense of wonder when the trail first breaks the treeline, the magic of encountering sunlit meadows thick with interesting plants, and the awe of summit views and sky. In romanticizing these experiences, it is easy to forget the anxiety about threatening weather, the difficulty in crossing fierce streams, the exhaustion of climbing. Then, later, one remembers.
Piece by piece, I sought to manifest the hiking experience, with the goal of accessing those large feelings and a state of equanimity. "Trail Dreams/Beyond the Body" is both a meditation and a reconciliation, a reminder that an experience of wonder can be reached with or without an able body.
Note: This piece is a single entry built on two adjacent boards, specifically for ease of transport, hanging, and handling. The boards are unequal in width, in part due to the physical space where it will reside, and the hanging constraints. The submission dimensions reflect the entire piece.
Fine Art Segment (Wall Mosaics)
18.5 x 60 x 1.25
22.2
Materials List
Stained glass, Italian and Mexican smalti, mixed glass materials, slate and mixed stone and pebbles, unglazed porcelain, picassiette, beeds, ceramic, original photographs etched on stained glass, LED light* (*one fish is backlit).
Artist Statement
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, etc) form their own story and interact with each other. I am continuously experimenting to fultill 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.
