Artist incorporates ‘gutter glitter’ into mosaics

For the Cumberland Times-News

CUMBERLAND — Fragments fascinate mosaic artist Sherri Loomis.

“Walking to work in Baltimore, I saw puzzles, toys, broken 45’s, chicken bones and cracked circuit boards,” said Loomis. “I started using found ‘gutter glitter’ in my artwork.”

Loomis embeds metal, glass and found objects into mosaic artwork to create tables and wall panels. Her mosaic style ranges from classic Ravenna gilded glass techniques with prominent work lines, to more whimsical ones using plastic animals, skeleton keys, bones and game pieces.

In 1977, Loomis began combining photographs, paintings, found objects and monoprints with map-like images. A “new” bachelor of fine arts program in mixed media allowed her to continue to experiment with unconventional art materials. In 1979, she created large-scale “map-paintings” of wall-sized lithographs and lumber connected to canvas by fragile joints made of dotted lines of temporary tape.

Later, working as a junior cartographer, she created a series of paintings that explored boundaries and planes using highly-colored cardboard with metal scraps. She exhibited in Washington Project for The Arts and 931 1/2 ‘F’ Street Gallery in Washington from 1984 through 1988.

She studied under Rick Shelley, a master mosaic artist (“Map of The World,” Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) trained in Venice, Italy. Her current mosaics are inspired by classic Ravenna, Italy techniques where glass tesserae (small pieces of glass) are cut at different angles and set into mortar. The tilted glass surface causes a flickering of reflected light, especially on gilded or metal-leafed glass. This deliberate irregularity of the facets moves the eye through shapes of highly-colored textures.

Since Loomis has moved to the rural mountains of Western Maryland, she continues to explore the local materials in native slate and glass in her sculptures and 2-D mosaic panels. She continues to work on the theme of ladders and pathways in her 2-D work using small (4 x8-inch) panels to larger ones (24 x 60 inches). Her most recent mural work, “Carpe Diem!” is two panels of carp (38 x 52 inches each) displayed in the diagnostic waiting room in the new Western Maryland Regional Medical Center in Cumberland, The carp (or koi) are symbols of great strength and stubbornness who journey through challenges and transform. The water signifies movement when flowing energies create a pathway to healing, with no obstacles or barriers, through glittering spirals that lift and change us and our journey.

“The ladder is an icon for paths, upward directions and the erroneous idea that moving up is powerful. I am interested in the way paths are chosen,” said Loomis. “Choices from ‘directions’ which are not physical, navigating imaginary maps by memory using non-linear directions: circular, upside down, backward. I want to create fragile, dreamlike ladders with impossible rungs. I see out of the corner of my eye — the illusion of a solid path is always darting away in a sparkle of light, It is like watching the tesserae glitter as you move around them. This essence is only seen by indirectly glancing between the spaces, like the rungs of a ladder.”