"When not working in the garden, find me in the studio."

All of us share the innate desire to make sense of our lives, particularly when the paths we've taken have been unusually configured, miraculously aligned, or disrupted in places. Within the framework of hindsight, the story we tell ourselves is a mosaic of sorts, a narrative constructed from the details we set aside and the ones we put together.

 

I grew up in Southern California in the late '50s and '60s, in what now seems like a mythically idyllic time in our nation.

I had a beloved tabby cat, a well-worn pair of lace-up roller skates, and the freedom to hop on my bike, ride across town to play with a friend, and return home in time for dinner without worrying anyone.

 

Childhood came with a wide swath of unstructured time, and I majored in pretend, playing in my room for hours or out in the open fields and drainage ditch behind our house. Books were the cherished companions I journeyed with to far-off places. 

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There were swim lessons, piano lessons, guitar lessons, and the glossy black clarinet I played in Junior High and High School marching band and orchestra. Money earned from babysitting and washing test tubes in a local hospital laboratory, my first job with a real paycheck at fourteen, was invested in an ever-growing stack of albums. Music spun round and round on the turntable in my bedroom.    

 

I had the singular good fortune to be born to parents who loved me unconditionally and role-modeled industry. "Do It Yourself"

resourcefulness was practiced with gusto in our house. Walls got painted or wall-papered for a quick change of scenery. A patio materialized brick by brick. Tea roses sprang up on either side of the walkway to our front door from stick cuttings dipped in root tone and planted with thorny intention in the ground.    

 

The landscape of my childhood left an indelible impression on me-- the ancient oaks with their treasure trove of acorns to line my pockets, a lilac bush strategically planted next to the clothesline. The four straight furrows my mother hoed in the backyard to create a strawberry patch. A flat of rubbery ground cover brought home from the nursery that neatly filled in the spaces between the stepping stones on the shady side of the house.
 

There was an alchemy to growing things that held my attention growing up, not only in my own backyard but out on the plains of southeastern Wyoming, where my mother's older sisters went toe to toe with the wind and the high altitude three-month growing season of the prairie.

 

When it came to gardening in a less than ideal environment, my aunties all but pulled rabbits out of their hats-- Sweet peas and peonies dotted their gardens. Crab apples bubbled into jam on the cast iron stove. Green tomatoes were whisked from the vine before an early frost set in. Mason jars of pickled "this and that" lined the shelves of their root cellars by winter. 

 

 If dirt underneath the fingernails was a family inclination, I've merely followed in that direction, adding a bit of grout and clay into the mix.

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Mosaics first appealed to me as a way to bring a touch of whimsy into my garden. The brightly colored bric-a-brac looked easy enough to piece together--fools everyone--and I liked the idea of being able to repurpose china or some precious treasure that had been"broke in tiny pieces." 

 

 I began to mosaic things: stepping stones, a trellis, a garden bench. Eventually, an old fiberglass greenhouse on the ranch became a workspace shared with cobwebs, spiders, and a good friend who came over to work with me on a regular basis. Projects bloomed. The two of us took classes with various well-known mosaic artists, then determined to add a broader range of texture, shape, and color to the materials we worked with, set out on the improbable adventure of teaching ourselves ceramics. Another "How hard could it be?" endeavor where high enthusiasm ran straight into "learning curve," and the learning curve often had the last laugh. Time passed, and the garage made room for a kiln, the greenhouse morphed into a real studio, and the years of experimenting accrued. 

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 And so here I find myself in 2021, gray-haired gardener and serendipitous embellisher of things, surprised as anyone to be wrestling with the muse in a light-filled studio, covered with bright colored mosaics, looking out upon the small corner of Eden I tend.

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I'd like to think it speaks to the ageless potential waiting to be unearthed and brought to light in all of us. 

 

 Julie Castleberry Nuñez  

UC, Irvine  BA, MFA

brokeintinypieces@yahoo.com 

Past blog: www.mitesserae-mosaics.blogspot.com

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