Five Pods

Most contemporary mosaic, like stained glass, takes the form of independent panels or is architectural. Few artists have developed the medium for contemporary sculpture, and in this regard, Ann Gardner’s work is exceptional. She has realized architectural projects and large-scale sculpture and installations, succeeding both in taking mosaic out of the limited contexts in which it is traditionally applied and in finding new potential for the medium. Gardner’s sculptures make use of reflected light and shadow to create volume. Five Pods is a circle of continuous podlike shapes covered with Gardner’s handmade glass mosaic tiles. The metallic foil backing on the tiles adds light and movement to the mosaic, and this effect is amplified by the sculpture’s organic curves. To make her glass tiles, Gardner uses the kind of colored sheet glass commonly found in stained glass. She glues metal leaf (either silver or gold) onto the back of her glass sheets, and then she cuts the sheets into half-inch squares. The construction of the surfaces is repetitive and can take weeks to complete. Nevertheless, her sculptures seem delicate, in spite of their often large size, and they have a sense of spontaneity and movement. Gardner employs a range of colors in her work, but her pieces are characteristically monochromatic. Her color choices are always carefully considered, and she favors golden yellows and cobalt blues, symbolic of day and night, for her larger sculptures. Many of her works, in their reflection of light and shadow as the sun and clouds move through the day and through the seasons, are about the passage of time. For more information, see Ann Gardner and Pablo Schugurensky, Ann Gardner: New Sculpture, Point in Time, Seattle: Winston Wächter Fine Art, 2011; and Ann Gardner, “A Body of Work: Ann Gardner,” Mosaic Art Now, no. 3, 2010, pp. 16–24.