Fun Figurative Mosaics in Stained Glass with Shug Jones

Shug Jones, a seventh generation Texan, is from North Texas, where she returned after living several years in Southeast Asia and Europe with her Navy husband. These experiences plus her continued travel have greatly inspired and influenced her mosaics. While she occasionally works abstractly with smalti and stone, her love of stained glass draws her to create photo-realistic art that concentrates on her observance of people around her and their interactions with others.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I have worked in many media over the years—graphite, ink, colored pencil, oil, watercolor, and even scratchboard. They all have their place in my repertoire of art supplies. Today, however, I choose to use tactile materials, such as glass, stone, porcelain, and beads to make my art.  

It is the textures and the colors that draw me in—the need to create something that moves, converses with, and surprises the viewer. I love the challenge of combining the colored tesserae in such a way as to create a color entirely different, the process of gluing thousands of tiny pieces of glass to a surface that when viewed from a distance becomes a realistic image. 

Mosaic has broadened my view of what art is. It has given me the desire to go beyond the two-dimensional surface and seek the third dimension. It has opened my eyes to possibilities that I never knew existed and abilities I never knew were there inside me.  

In 2018, I began a series of works I call Mosaic Photographs. They are based on images that I capture on my frequent travels in the U.S. and abroad. Primarily figurative and architectural in nature, they are meant to be viewed as one would a normal photograph.

The realism in my work is achieved by using value, color, and perspective. Preferring to use stained glass in most of my work, I find that the variety of glass, the swirls, the texture, the colors, lends itself to my needs. Identifying that just right area of the perfect glass to create the fabric of a pair of pants or to represent the shadow on a face is a challenge that I readily accept.

Most recently, I have worked to develop a substrate that is very thin and rigid while appearing flexible like a sheet of photographic paper to advance the appearance of my work to reach my goal. A mosaic photograph, a moment in time.