Mosaics in Seattle

She's back!

Two weeks away in the great Northwest, and what do I have to show for it? Besides a big grin and about five extra pounds, courtesy of tastings and flights? Pictures of mosaics!

In fact, the Fremont area of Seattle, which I'm assured is trendy and bohemian, is awash in mosaics. Well, it rains even in July there, so it's awash in just about everything.

I found Pique Assiette mosaics there, if you can believe that. The proof is in this picture.

No idea what artists were involved or if it was a community effort (I suspect yes) but the ground of this patio or plaza is covered in widely spaced tiles, with the grout being filled with things like bottle caps, screwdrivers, keys--lots of keys--and broken toys. And this pair of scissors.

The little square or plaza where these mosaics reside is most notable for an 8-ton bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin, which was cast in Soviet Czechoslovakia just a year before the communist government fell. Must have been aggravating for the artist, Emil Venkov, because he had worked on it for ten years. He portrayed Lenin against a background of flames and violence, most unusual, but the statue was thrown down.

How did it end up in Seattle? An American teacher in Poland, Lewis Carpenter, came across it in a scrap metal yard. With the help of a few others, he managed to buy the statue and have it shipped to Washington, but he had to mortgage his home to do so. He felt it should be preserved as a work of art.

Mr. Anderson died in a car crash before the statue was installed, and his family is willing to sell--but for upwards of a quarter million dollars.

The pique assiette mosaics are in the low walls and ground behind Lenin.

Have not found any mention of Lenin's red hands, and in fact they don't look red in other pictures of the statue, so I assume their color is due to local vandals or vandalizing activists, rather than the artist Venkov.

Just a couple of blocks away from Lenin and the pique assiette mosaics is this work of art by Jo Braun and Kate Jessup, installed last year. It was pouring rain when I took this photo, but it came out well.

The piece is called "Invasion of the FoundFacians." You can scroll through pictures of the artwork's elements and the planning stages on Jo Braun's website. Close up, you can see that some of the landscape is iridescent.

There was more public art and sculpture in the area, and I missed most of it because, being an Angeleno, I wimp out in rain. But I do have more pictures from both Seattle and Half Moon Bay in California, which I'll share over the next few Mosaic Mondays.

Alhambra Library Mosaics: Pique-Assiette

Pique-Assiette means taking bits from others' plates, as near as I can figure. In mosaic, it means incorporating broken bits of ceramic and found objects into the artwork. I wrote about pique-assiette and this week's artist, Jolino Beserra, in 2011 when the Los Angeles Times featured the mosaics he created for his own house in a story.

Today--and next week too--the spotlight is on mosaics that Beserra created for a couple of local libraries.

The archway leading into the children's area of the Alhambra Civic Center Library comes first. That's it to the left, with the artist. The picture comes from Lisa Yee's blog. The little yellow fellow in his hands is named Peppy, belongs to Lisa, and sneaks into most of her photos.

This library is new; it just opened in late 2008. Ms. Yee has photos of the opening too, here (and on the right, below).

Jolino Beserra's website has a beautiful photo presentation of the library mosaic, which I urge you to look at. Close ups of many of the panels.

Here is part of the statement that opens the slide show:

"The concept is to mix technology and the arts & sciences in a way that will inspire children to explore all the possibilities available to them in books. My goal was to create a magical gateway to the joys of reading and imagination."

(Do you know how many ways there are to misspell Jolino Beserra? Hopefully I'll have them all corrected before I hit "publish." And yes, I know my own name is worse.)

Skipping around Google, I can tell you he has five rescues, which endears him to me.

Beserra was born in East Los Angeles, grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, spent two years at Pasadena City College and got his BA from the Art Center College of Design. That was in 1982, and he went to work for an advertising agency. In 1985 he started his own studio with his partner--now husband--David Edward Byrd.

Almost every article about Beserra mentions that Simon Rodia's Watts Towers had a deep influence on him. He worked there as a summer intern restoring the Towers in 1989, and his yellow-and blue room-sized homage to Rodia may be the topic of another Mosaic Monday.

Other early influences that molded his career was seeing, during a trip to Arkansas, some folk art: bottles that had been lovingly covered with buttons, service medals, and more, made by a grandmother for her grandchildren, and the discovery of folk art animals.

As he says on his website, "My goal as an artist has always been the desire to create visual stores."

South Pasadena Library Mosaic

Another week, another library, another children's room, another pique-assiette mosaic by Jolino Beserra. Could that possibly get old? Take a look at the picture on the left, and you tell me.

This mosaic pillar was installed in 2011 in the Children's Room of the South Pasadena Library, and I believe the Friends of the Library covered the expenses.

And that's all I know--I will leave you with this lovely photo of the pillar, up on a Flickr photostream by one Walterrr.

Mosaic House in Venice

This one's no secret--it's got its own website and Facebook page, both of which proclaim the address and keep folks updated on public tour dates. The photo at right came from the website, and there are many more there--but I'm particularly fond of wisteria so we'll start with that.

The mosaic house sits on Palms Blvd, between Lincoln and Penmar. It's owned by Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran, both busy and successful artist. Lately, their work has been focused in Los Angeles, and a big part of that work is on exhibit in their home.

As you can see from the picture below left, from the AvoidingRegret blog, there's a great deal of pique-assiette in this home--as there was in the last two Mosaic Monday posts, which focused on works by Jolina Beserra.

But it's not all one style, and the artists, while whimsical, also consider the home a work of art first, and a novelty second. Since 1994, Cheri has created the tiles, and Gonsalo shatters and scatters, according to one post--but I'm sure it's more collaborative and less simplified than that.

Cheri Pann told blogger Sandi of AvoidingRegret that she considers her home different from, say, Simon Rodia's Watts Towers. "For them [Rodia et al] it's an obsession," she said. "In art, there's planning. We strategize everything."

There are many photo essays on the Venice Mosaic House, but my favorite is at AvoidingRegret, and I suggest you scroll through for the big photos and the small details. I think I like it best because the post starts out by admitting that photos cannot do the house justice.

The rest of the photos here come from AtlasObscura, from a blog written by Robert, whose signature seems to be RJHEMEDES. Hope I got that right. There are many more pictures in his article, so please go see it.

First is the kitchen, and I must honestly state that I can't tell what is real above the sink and what is mortared onto the shelf and wall. The bananas are real right? And most of the coffee cups and bowls. . . maybe.

Second is the bath. Third is the front porch. Such mundane words for such wondrous sites.

More pictures of the kitchen from other angles are on the other websites  mentioned, including this page from Cheri Pann's website.

Silver Lake Mosaic (it almost rhymes!)

The Silver Lake home of artists David Edward Byrd and Jolino Beserra (Beserra is the mosaicist) is full of mosaics--so many, in fact, that the Los Angeles Times has an online photo spread of the place.  It was published about two weeks ago, and I missed it because I finally ended my subscription to the Times....sigh. It just wasn't getting read.

Anyway, the actual article link is here. I copied a pastiche photo (all pictures taken by R. Daniel Foster) showing details of several mosaics. The image on the left is, I believe, from the fireplace. The couple's portraits and birthdates are embedded somewhere in there, according the the Times.

All the mosaics use not just tile and glass, but ceramic figurines, thimbles, toys, bottles, marbles, bright rhinestone pins and jewelry, even coffee cup pieces, as you can see in the center mosaic. That one has an image of an LA street car just out of sight to the left of the ceramic spice jar--which belonged to Beserra's grandmother.

As for the third picture, it's from an outdoor shower. Of course.

According to Beserra's home page, the style is called "pique-assiette." There are plenty more pictures, both of his home and other installations, on the site. He's been written up in Sunset and other magazines, and I hope he doesn't mind that I borrowed this picture of him at work.

LeTete Mosaics in Redondo Beach

It is indeed a small world.

I toddled into Le Tete in Redondo Beach, a clothing, jewelry, and accessory store in the Riviera Village that carries a few books by local authors. A friend had advised me of this last fact, so I hoped that Stella, the owner, would display The Boomer Book of Christmas Memoriesin the store. And she did!

But that's another story. This post is about mosaics.

The small world part comes when I entered. The store Le Tete is at 1911 S. Catalina, at the south end of that street, just blocks from the beach. It's a taller building than most on the street, with a large, fanciful, multi-color tree painted on the facade. On the side of the upper part of the building, you can still see the sign "Harmony Works"--that's the store that used to be there.

I walked over a mosaic in the doorway. Ah-ha! I had just revived my blog and was looking for new mosaics to photograph. However, this was just before Christmas and the store was busy.

Last week, when I returned with my camera to ask about the mosaic, Stella and I chatted. She pulled out a mosaic that she keeps in the jewelry display case and allowed me to take this picture of it and of her.

Stella showed me the other mosaics she had on the walls, and even in the back patio. All of them were made by her husband, artist and mosaicist Stefan LeTete.

When Stella showed me the small mosaics on the walls, and the one in the patio, she asked me if I knew about the Home Savings & Loan mosaics--she could not think of the name of the artist. When I said, "Millard Sheets," another customer jumped in. Millard Sheets has fans everywhere! We talked about his oil paintings, and the art gallery at the LA County Fair, which is now called the Millard Sheets Art Center. That's where an exhibition of Sheets' work was on display a few years ago, put together by his son, artist Tony Sheets.

And as it turns out, Stella's husband Stefan LeTete drove out to Claremont decades ago to buy all the leftover tiles he could from the Millard Sheets Studios when that company closed down. Some of those tile pieces that he got from the Claremont studio so long ago--a studio that is today an optician's office--are in these mosaics that Stephan made for his wife's shop.

As for that Pique-Assiette mosaic in the doorway: A friend installed that about a year ago, but I got so distracted that I never learned more about it.