Jamie Pink

I started my work life in the usual way—working in a friend's business, the family business, assuming that I'd be stuffed into an office somewhere in spite of the fact that I got an art degree. My general belief was that art was fine as a hobby, but to depend on it to make a living was foolish. Still, I felt strongly that making art would make me happier than anything else I might choose. I planned my art degree with enough commercial art classes that I hoped someone might hire me. Product photography would keep me employed, I hoped, and I have never regretted that choice. I worked for food and product photographers, and it was a truly awful and fascinating job. The hours were long, the pay was low, and the mass quantities of food were disgusting. I was able to use this skill in a catalog business for many years.

Cacophony
2016
Smalti glass in many different colors on a birch plywood substrate
16 x 16 x 2 inches

Growth
2016
Smalti glass in opaque colors and 22k gold, amethyst chunks, artist made ceramic flower on a birch plywood substrate. The substrate is undulating with carved styrofoam, thinset to the base and garden hard cloth and plaster cast provides a smooth surface on which to mosaic
16 x 16 x 4 inches

I began making mosaics in 2000. It took a few years before I began to view it as a life's work. There are a lot of tools available in mosaics. Or you can stick to about five tools and popsicle sticks—I was very content with that for several years. I attended a mosaic conference and there was glass and stone that required a bigger set of tools and with that, I committed to mosaics in a serious way. I love that mosaics can be very regimented or as loose and organic as an oil painting, that it can be abstract or representational, photo-realistic, cartoonish, and the list of materials is endless. Glass, both opaque and clear, in the form of smalti pizzas, tiles, chunks, stone, metal, marble, pebbles, and 22k gold tile in different colors. There are many different types of mosaics—pebble mosaics, micro mosaics, crash glass and on and on. I still love painting and photography, but mosaics are the biggest challenge of all. I work hard to send mosaics out into the world.

Memorial Fence
2021
In Honor of the 9-11 20th Anniversary 360 Ground Zero Organization
Sculpture made of a birch plywood base, galvanized garden hardcloth, plaster cast, thinset, lathe screws, glass smalti in many colors, vitreous glass tile, Italian-made mille fiori
12 x 20 x 12 inches

I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty
2017
Homage to Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story
Smalti glass in large and small pieces along with mille fiori, amethyst chunks and marble stone on a b

Jamie Pink received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.