Robert Sherman, USA

Mosaic making is a painstaking, yet satisfying, and sometimes even cathartic experience for me. Integrating broken fragments into an unbroken whole is perhaps an existential metaphor. I take inspiration from two quite different sources: Ravenna, Italy’s 6th-century Byzantine glass mosaics, and Antonin Gaudi’s 19th-century trencar clay mosaics in Barcelona, Spain. My work, consequently, combines colored mirror glass and shards of my own hand-stamped, crystal-glazed clay tiles. Recent pieces also incorporate photos of masks I created in the 1970s, now imprinted onto clay. While revisiting my past mask art, new thematic meanings emerged. Seeing myself, and my masks, in new mythic, classic, and biblical contexts was revelatory—and truly an emotional journey back in time.

 
Creating “Sequestered with Memory” in my studio during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Creating “Sequestered with Memory” in my studio during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2012, I studied in Ravenna with Luciana Notturni, the doyenne of Byzantine mosaic. Using Byzantine-era tools, we hand-cut our own tesserae (small rectangular cubes) from smalti, highly reflective, opaque Venetian glass. At that time, I created “A Byzantine Detail,” representing a star from the ceiling mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placida (circa 5th century).

In 2012, I studied in Ravenna with Luciana Notturni, the doyenne of Byzantine mosaic. Using Byzantine-era tools, we hand-cut our own tesserae (small rectangular cubes) from smalti, highly reflective, opaque Venetian glass. At that time, I created “A Byzantine Detail,” representing a star from the ceiling mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placida (circa 5th century).