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Thank you for visiting Virginia Mosaics. My name is Virginia Gardner, and I make art in mosaic from my studio located in the beautiful countryside surrounding Charlottesville, Virginia. I gained my BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1979 and worked as a professional arts administrator for seven years, working with emerging artists in not-for-profit settings. In the late 1980s, I put aside my art and developed a thriving real estate business, a business I still enjoy today. Building that business has given me a great deal of pleasure over the past 20 years, but that nagging creative voice pushed it's way to the surface again in the first years of the new century.
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My work is all about the materials, combining diverse materials in a way that stimulates a thought or emotion. From my very first experiments with mosaic in the landscape, I recognized the power which is inherent in those materials. I became a facilitator, as the materials did their magic.
In my first two-dimensional pieces, I sought to make the materials do things they wouldn't do naturally. I would combine ceramic ware, hand cut it in erratic shapes, with a static background of another "hard" material, such as glass tiles. I wanted the ceramic pieces to become fluid. In one of those first pieces, "Ever So", the china appears to drape itself over and under the glass.
As I worked my way through the technical learning curve, I found myself drawn further to textural materials and the effects which result from combinations of diverse materials. Today, my studio is visual chaos to an observer, but it is a womb for me. While I work, I am surrounded by shelves of kitsch, ceramics and glass, a wall of rocks, stone & crystals... this carnival of visual stimuli is my inspiration.
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| "Ever So", 16" x 7" |
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| Phase 1, Mexico garden wall |
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Gardening has been a passion my entire adult life, and I have enjoyed the creative aspects of building colorful, perennial landscapes for our home in Virginia. In 2003, I had the opportunity to create a new garden from scratch at a home my family owns in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. I was able to take color to a whole new level, and I began building soft- and hard-scapes, using tropical plant materials and stone. I learned to cast concrete, and I began adding mosaics to the garden, first in simple stepping stones, and eventually to larger murals applied to vertical surfaces in the garden. |
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| "Change", 10" x 10" |
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From those early garden creations has grown an absolute fascination with the art of mosaic.
Through this remarkable art form, I have found a vehicle for expressing my love for color and texture. I produce both two-dimensional work and functional & decorative mosaics
If you are interested in contacting me, please email
Virginia@Charlottesville.net,
If you would like to receive periodic updates about my work,
please feel free to complete the following contact form.
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ARTIST RESUME
Education
BFA, 1979 Art History, with emphasis on Arts Administration, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia
Professional Experience in the Arts
Gallery Assistant, Art Sales Gallery for Virginia Artists, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, 1979-1982
Director, Second Street Gallery, an alternative arts space, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1982-1986
Independent Mosaic Studies
2007, Workshop, "A Lighter Base for 3-D Mosaics: Polystyrene Forms and Polymer Fortified Concrete", with Sherri Warner Hunter
2007, Workshop, "Design for Mosaics", with Emma Biggs
2007, Conference, Society of American Mosaic Artists - Pheonix, AZ
2007, Workshop with Ilana Shafir, Washington, DC
2005, Workshop, "Winterstone for Sculpture", with Heather Dadek
2005. Workshop, "Mosaic Basics", with Shug Jones and Karen Ami
2005, Conference, Society of American Mosaic Artists - Washington, DC
Exhibitions
2007, A Handmade Season, group show, Artisans Center of Virginia, Waynesboro, Virginia
2007, Life in Pieces, solo exhibition, C’ville Arts gallery, May 2007
2006, American Mosaic Project, group show sponsored by the Society of American Mosaic Artists, exhibited at High Risk Gallery, Chicago,Illinois
2005, American Mosaic Project, sponsored by SAMA, exhibited at Eleven-Eleven Scupture Space, Washington, D.C.
Galleries
Bricks & Mortar:
C’ville Arts, Charlottesville, Virginia
Black Rock Gallery, Wintergreen, Virginia
Online:
MyArtSpace, premiere membership
AbsoluteArts, premiere membership
Publications
Art featured with article, “City Styles, Country Miles: Charlottesville, Va., is brimming with art and architecture” by Margaret Lucke, AmericanStyle magazine, April 2008
Mosaic Art Now, New Directions in Modern Mosaic Art: An International Perspective, published by Bill Buckingham and Michael Welch, February 2008
Art featured with article, Daily Progress newspaper, January 2008 (click here for article)
Mosaic Yearbook, 2005-2007, published by Bill Buckingham and Lynn Moor
Art featured with article, “Mosaic: Tesserae,” by Tammy Wise, Glass Craftsman, Aug/Sept 2005
Art featured on EBSQ, Featured Gallery, “Glass”, June 2005
Organizations
Society of American Mosaic Artists
C’ville Arts: an Artists’ Cooperative
British Association of Modern Mosaicists
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