Mosaic artists produce patterns out of randomness

As a child in Homer, Chris Blankenship would sometimes paint rocks to sell to tourists. She didn't know it at the time, but she had an artistic side that would eventually be expressed in the art of mosaic tile setting.

Today, Half Moon Creek studio off Soapstone Road sells mosaic furniture, wall hangings and architectural installations faster than Blankenship and her three partners-in-art can keep up with demand. No one is more surprised than Blankenship.

"When we started talking about doing this as a business, I thought that I was going to be the one doing the administrative stuff," Blankenship said, "It never occurred to me that I would actually be the one who would be expressing myself in this way."

The studio is operated by Blankenship, Abigail Saltonstall, Lezlie Lambeth and Blankenship's daughter Christian.

Blankenship almost always refers to the work at Half Moon Creek in the third-person plural, as in: "what we make" or "the way we make it."

Although Saltonstall, Lambeth and Christian use the same manner of speech, they just as often refer to Blankenship as the one with the artistic vision.

"I can come up with a perfectly good table, but [Chris] might change the taper in the leg, and it makes all the difference," Abigail said.

Saltonstall is the woodworker of the bunch. She builds furnishings that are stout enough to hold the tiles that will be attached to them. Lambeth does wood finish work, and when Half Moon Creek opens a gallery in Anchorage next fall, she'll be the one managing the store and cafŽ.

"I don't get anywhere near the mosaic, let's put it that way," Lambeth said.

Of the three, Christian is closest to being a mosaic

apprentice.

"She's starting to order me around sometimes -- and I'm her mother," Blankenship said.

Blankenship's own apprenticeship came in the 1970s and 80s through on-the-job training as a tile setter. Like many people her age -- she's 45 -- Blankenship worked during the oil boom years as a self-employed subcontractor. And, like many, she didn't reveal her inexperience on those earliest job sites.

Nowadays, in conversations about grout and adhesives there's no naivete to conceal, but the jargon is often mixed with an urge to describe the look and feel of colors.

"I've done enough six-by-six white tile tub surrounds to last a lifetime," she says. "A lot of it was just oatmeal."

Everyone at Half Moon Creek has been nicked -- and could be bleeding as you read this -- because the tiles aren't always broken or cut from six-by-six ceramics. Sometimes they're smashed from glass and put into a tumbler to smooth the sharp edges. Matching mugs and dinner plates are fair game, as is fragile stained glass or anything-but-fragile structural glass. There are also glass-blowers who sell their failed pieces to Half Moon Creek.

The work coming out of Half Moon Creek is anything but "oatmeal." Tiles from tumbled or cut glass or ceramic hang on the wood pieces in a myriad of colors and forms. Sometimes the patterns are abstract -- minimalism and cubism come to mind -- the way one would expect objects borne from randomness to be arranged. Other times, the patterns replicate organic shapes such as flowers, fish skin, or flowing water in a manner that begs the question, "How did you do that?"

Blankenship admits to waking up from a deep sleep with a mosaic pattern on her mind. She also admits that cutting a tile to fit makes her work faster and enables her to articulate those visions in tile. All four women admit to pulling all-nighters in an effort to stock up prior to a sales event such as the Alaska Sate Fair.

But none of the four partners knew ahead of time that their venture could keep all of them employed -- let alone make all-nighters and a studio-owned gallery necessary. In the six years since they started, the phrase "We had no idea" has become a Half Moon Creek mantra.

Add to that "It's all right, I'm just going to break it" which is the standard reply when a store clerk offers to wrap up a set of ceramic mugs for one of the artists.