Greet Weitenberg--------------------I make mosaics
How do I work
I mostly work in series. This might be triggered by something I see, something I read about or even by a commissioned work.
Before I actually start making the surface or even the mosaic, I already work on it in my head, I kind of sit and bread on it like a swan on her eggs. When my thoughts get a little straightened out, I start looking around in (and outside) my studio for the materials, the tesserae, which might go with it. Or I start making the surface first, whatever feels intuitive the right thing to do. After I have taken the tesserae, I can see if they can reflect the ideas I have with this particular artwork. Sometimes it looks really beautiful but it is not what I mean to say with this work, so I can’t use it.
I use many different tools to work with the tesserae, each tool has its own capacity to make the tesserae the way I want it to be. I vary between shiny tesserae like gold, glass, mother of pearl, with mat surfaces like marble, stone. I create my artwork myself with no help from others. Every tesserae is handcut by myself. I have one “golden” rule: If I can’t cut the piece by hand, than it is not meant to be in my artwork. I don’t sand my tesserae, I cut it until it is the way I want it to be. Everything is made by hand, no machines are involved.
