Laura Rendlen, the painter turned mosaicist

I first saw this mosaic, Leonardo, when I was paging through the 2009 edition of Mosaic Art Now. I stopped turning pages at that point and just stared. Before I read the title of the piece, I knew exactly who the subject was. Leonardo is a gesture drawing done in smalti and marble, and Laura Rendlen succeeded in capturing the very essence of the man Leonardo Da Vinci. She reduced Da Vinci's early 1500s self-portrait to a series of shards and shadows without losing anything yet at the same time, making his likeness uniquely hers. Brava Laura, brava.

Laura Rendlen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a major in sculpture. After she graduated she started painting scenery and props. At the suggestion of her partner, she started painting with smaller brushes and set about the business of transforming homes. Together, they became experts in murals and trompe l'oiel. Over the next 25 years, they were awarded commissions to do some exemplary, high-profile work. You can see some of her painting on her website under Custom Murals and Painting.

After 25 years spent doing residential and commercial work, Laura wanted to do something different. Something that would keep her off ladders for a change. As luck would have it, a client asked her to design a mosaic back splash and she agreed to do it. She threw herself into the project, researching materials and techniques, and the resulting mosaic changed the trajectory of her life. To quote from her website:

Mosaics combine the tactile construction of sculpture, the vision of painting, and the timeless permanence that I had been searching for in art.

Laura's work betrays her background as a painter. There's a knowing quality at work here and it's fantastic to see her refer to the history of art as she sets about creating an art of her own. To see more of Laura's work or to contact her about buying her art, please go to her website.

Currently, Laura's gearing up to teach a class in mosaic art at the Chicago Mosaic School, the only school of its kind in North America. Based on what I see here, I cannot imagine a better teacher.

An artist's portrait: Carole Choucair Oueijan

Cerulean Rendezvous

Ever since I met the great Sara Baldwin of New Ravenna Mosaics last spring, I continue to be exposed to deeper and finer expressions of the mosaic as art. It's been a real adventure and the more I learn the deeper into I get. New Ravenna Mosaics led me to Mosaic Art Now and through Mosaic Art Now I've been privileged to meet a number of fine art mosaicists. In what I plan to make a regular feature of this blog, I am going to start writing profiles of these gifted artists.

Carole Choucair Oueijan's Dreamer was a featured work in the current issue of Mosaic Art Now and I started corresponding with Carole through Facebook about a month ago. Carole was born in Beirut, Lebanon and is of Lebanese and Greek heritage. Carole studied loved painting in oils and water colors from an early age and studied fine art in Beirut. Her oil paintings of Eastern Mediterranean people and places led her to Greece in 1989 where she discovered the nearly extinct art of mosaic. Carole studied under the tutelage of Orthodox clergy who had the task of preserving and creating the art of classical iconography. From Greece, Carole moved to California where she began applying her painterly eye to her signature mosaic style.

Carole works in smalti (a kind of glass) and natural stone and her work starts as a drawing on canvas. She then stretches her canvas on a frame and begins to select and cut her smalti into small pieces called tesserae. Carole then glues the smalti tesserae and pieces of natural stone down to the canvas. Carole works with her materials face down, so she's essentially working in reverse. During the months it takes her to complete a work, the only way she can see her finished product is with her mind's eye. Once the pieces are glued into place she covers the back of her work with concrete and lets it set. It's only then that she turns it over to see the finished piece.

The perfection and nuanced color of her mosaics attest loudly to the power of Carole's imagination. I mean, look at these mosaics!

Dreamer

Dreamer detail #1

Dreamer detail #2

Mermaid

Mermaid detail #1

Carole does commissioned work and you can look through the rest of her portfolio on her website. The images expand when you click on them, so be sure to spend some time on that site. Her website too shows the art she still creates in media other than mosaic and it lists her numerous awards and upcoming exhibitions. Drop by and say hello.

All work shown ©Carole Choucair Oueijan and used with permission.

Speaking of urinals

On Saturday I sent out a plaintive cry to the blogosphere, "Help me find the perfect urinal for a master bath project oh wise and powerful Internet." I've been inundated with links and suggestions since Saturday afternoon.

I am leaning heavily toward the Starck by Duravit just in case you're interested. However, somebody set me a link to the men's room at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI. Oh my word. Would that I had the budget to commission something like these:

Lord, by Matt Nolan

Patron, by Matt Nolan

Pontiff, by Matt Nolan

Water, by Ann Agee

Sunday mornings with Father Jerome

It's Sunday morning and my brain is jelly. In a week I'll be completely unplugged and unreachable in my idea of paradise and I am dying to get out of here. My great pals at My Out Islands recently produced a video about my beloved Cat Island and watching it isn't helping me concentrate on what I need to get done this week.

They did a fantastic job and it really captures the off-the-beaten path spirit of the place. Cat Island and the rest of the Out Islands are everything The Atlantis Resort is not. The Ministry of Tourism refers to the Out Islands as the real Bahamas and I can't agree more. Life's hard out there and as a visitor, the payment for the hardships endured is a nearly hallucinatory quiet.

That video's interesting too in that I know everybody who's in it. Tony Armbrister owns the house where I stay and Captain Tom lives next door. I love it too that they show some scenes of Cat Island's glamorous and exciting night life. Well it's glamorous and exciting if your idea of a good time is a guitar and a bonfire on the beach.

The video doesn't explain the story of Father Jerome and the Hermitage very well though. The Hermitage is the name of the ruin on the summit of Mount Alvernia (elevation 206 feet!) the hostess is walking around toward the end of that video.

The Out Islands of The Bahamas maintain their history orally and what follows is the story of The Hermitage as it's been told to me. I have scoured the Internet looking for more information on the man embodied in those stone structures, but alas, I think the story of Father Jerome and his Hermitage exists only in the late night stories of the people of Cat Island.

The Hermitage was built by a man from Ireland once named John Cyril Hawes but known later as Father Jerome. John Cyril Hawes was an architect and Anglican Priest who came to The Bahamas in 1909 by way of Australia to build churches for the Church of England. In Clarence Town on Long Island, he oversaw the construction of what became his final Anglican church, the Church of St. Paul. Something happened to Hawes during that construction project and exactly what happened is lost to history. What is known is that as soon as his Anglican church was completed, Father Hawes converted to Roman Catholicism and began to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He entered the seminary as Father John Cyril Hawes and he left as Father Jerome.

Once ordained, he sailed back to Long Island and broke ground on a Catholic Church in Clarence Town. Father Jerome's Church of St. Peter was completed in 1939 and still stands in sight of John Cyril Hawes' Church of St. Paul.

Father Jerome's Church of St. Peter, Long Island, The Bahamas

Father Jerome then sailed onto Cat Island. He set about immediately to build the still-standing Church of the Holy Redeemer in Freetown. Shortly after its completion he started construction on his Hermitage, which is where he would live out the last of his days in seclusion. Father Jerome died at the age of 80 in 1956.

The Hermitage, as it's come to be known, is a monastery in miniature. Father Jerome built it by himself with stones he carried, one by one, to the summit of Mount Alvernia. To climb up the stairs he cut into the hillside, to follow the Stations of the Cross he carved into his nearly vertical walking path, to stretch out on the stone cot where he slept is to look deep into the character of a man. It's not possible to walk away unaffected. Because the Hermitage is located so far from anything, some of his personal effects are still up there. The Tabernacle he carved and painted sits just where he left it on a small altar. His inscriptions, in Latin and Italian, are as legible today as they were when he carved them.

Cat Island seems to have cast the same spell on Father Jerome as it has on me. Every time I go back, I can't shake the idea that I should somehow just drop everything and go hide out on an island hillside somewhere in the Atlantic. But then I look around at everything Father Jerome built and realize that I just don't have it in me. I'm not made of the same stuff. So I go back again and again and I listen to the stories and I marvel at the land and I sit and I watch and I just let it be.

OK, who's ready for some of my vacation photos?!

This is looking down the footpath Father Jerome used to carry up the stone from which he built his Hermitage.

I am looking up at the back of the Hermitage from about three-quarters of the way up Father Jerome's path.

The last step on the path features a final word before entering The Hermitage proper, "Weep not for me but for yourselves and your children."

The Hermitage. The bell tower still has Father Jerome's bronze bell in it and the tower's attached to his one-room, one-pew church.

This is me standing at the rear of The Hermitage. Father Jerome's church is connected to his living quarters and food storage rooms.

This is one of Father Jerome's majolica plaques that's been mortared into the wall of his church. In Italian, it reads "Praised be to you Lord through the moon and stars."

When Father Jerome knelt to pray in his church he faced a window and here's what he saw.

This is the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Freetown, Cat Island. It was the last church built by Father Jerome.

Father Jerome's work shows a really strong Moorish influence and it's unmistakable in this detail shot of the Holy Redeemer Church.

The Narthex of the Holy Redeemer Church is decorated in primitive frescoes. The frescoes were painted by Bahamian villagers under Father Jerome's supervision. They are fading now and I think it's a riot that someone taped up a home made welcome sign.

A urinal! A urinal! My kingdom for a urinal!

via Flickr

I have been specifying household urinals for use in my bath renovation projects for years and I've only managed to get one client to go along for the ride. In that case, we bought an industrial urinal and installed it. I liked its utilitarian appearance and so did the client in question.

However, I have been working with a man I'll call Jack for about the last month and Jack's seen the light and is on board with my urinal idea for his master bath. However, he's not at all into the appearance of something that looks like it came out of a public rest room. That's completely understandable.

However, now I have to find a source for well-designed household urinals and I am drawing a blank. It figures, I have been extolling the virtues of these things for years and now that I have to put my money where my mouth is, I can't find a decent urinal. Oy!

So I'm sending this out to the ether, to both kitchen and bath people and regular Joes and Janes; anybody out there know anything about where to find an acceptable urinal? Anyone? Anyone?