SHANNA RATNER
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I am a self-taught artist who enjoys working with recycled materials and in multiple media. I was born in Chicago, Illinois, grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and lived in New York City, Boston, Africa, and elsewhere before settling in northern Vermont full time in 1984. I live and create art in Fairfield, Vermont. My mosaics are constructed from leftover and found tiles that have been broken and pieced together without additional shaping, lending a raw and spontaneous quality to the design. My first experience with tile mosaics was while building my house in Fairfield. The tiles I had chosen for her hearth did not precisely match the dimensions of the concrete slab, so I decided to adapt by breaking some of them and creating a mosaic down the middle. When the original house burned in 2009, I created floor mosaics as a way of incorporating pieces of the original house into its successor. These experiences have informed my work on the trivets. My earrings are handmade using hand torn colored tissue paper and recycled pressboard to create unique blends of color, shape and texture. This technique was inspired by an art project I created for my employees at Yellow Wood Associates in St. Albans that involved decorating clipboards (too large and heavy to hang by the ears!). I have been creating block prints for over 40 years. My work was originally inspired by poster-sized block prints created by friends to advertise theater performances. Today, my block prints are drawn mostly from nature filtered through my imagination. I like the feel of carving line and intention into blocks while attempting to communicate the essence of a particular place and moment in time that has captured my attention. I welcome feedback and I am open to working with you to co-create pieces that enrich your life and lived environment. For example, I will accept orders for specific color combinations, sizes, and shapes of earrings and I am open to creating custom mosaic pieces from materials of significance to you. For more information, please contact Shanna at 802-524-6604 or [email protected]. |