My current exhibition at Hampton Fine Arts Center, The Eclectic Art of Janet Kozachek, features both old and new mosaic assemblage pieces. The older figurative mosaics have not been on view for about ten years. These will be new to those who have not seen them before. The newly made mosaics pick up on the archeological theme where those older ones left off. The older mosaics depicted small ceramic figures lying in repose in what looked like dioramas of archeological excavation sites. These incorporated both found objects as well as handmade artifacts.
The newer, smaller mosaics, completed this November/December, made use of a pile of leftover 8" x 10" and 8" x 12" cement backer boards - a total of eight. Applying hand made ceramic bull noses to these for frames, using locally mined clay for hand made relief sculptures, and integrating found objects onto these pieces satisfied yet again my goal of dispatching with excess materials on hand. Because these cement boards were on the small side, rather than create environments as in the older, larger mosaics, I opted instead to focus on one or two artifacts. If the mosaics of the past evoked a sense of lost civilizations, these smaller ones would be the tools the people of these imaginary civilizations used and the objects they collected.
The two mosaics below have large keys central to their design. These keys were sculpted from my locally mined red clay and fashioned in a manner like old Nordic tools. The themes emerged slowly, as the art of mosaic is slow and deliberate. The key became not just an object but a means to understanding, hence the titles “The Key to Understanding Ancient Poetry,” and “The Key to Understanding Sibling Rivalry.” The key here unlocks not just physical doors, but access to information and a means to understanding.
The porcelain sherds in “The Key to Understanding Sibling Rivalry,” were a serendipitous find of two female figures from a broken Chinese vase. The sea tumbled pottery sherd with the three uneven lines stimulated a memory of someone I once knew who was the eldest in a family with three children. I always puzzled over how he was unable to see the pecking order in his own family, despite being a counselor to others’ families. In reflecting on the American striving for democratic equality, and how there must be a substantial cognitive disconnect with regard to how many people are actually raised, the title for this mosaic was born. The “key” to understanding here is perhaps the small imprint on the round form which reads, in ancient Chinese, “The Universal.” Family favorites are, in fact universal.
In “The Key to Understanding Ancient Poetry,” I use another stamp on the square ceramic piece above the key. The stamp is the ancient form in Chinese zhuan script for “Poetry.” The key to understanding is found in another stamp impressed into the ceramic lock. This one was impressed by a stamp that I had carved recently, adapting one carved by the Ming artist Su Xuan. It says, “I think of ancient people, and my heart is moved.” From the book Chinese Seals, Carving Authority and Creating History, by Weizu Sun.
My carved stone seal is not as nice by far as that of a Ming master, but it is serviceable.
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