About the mosaics....

I am drawn to creating mosaics. It has to do with giving new life to old things and using random bits and pieces to create a new cohesive and meaningful whole. The history and earlier life of Barbados intrigue me. These pieces combine that interest: they are a song to Barbados. Most of the shards used in these mosaics- whether the common cream ware, the blue and white transfer ware, hand-painted Chinese shards, Amerindian pottery or early Barbados clayware are from broken crockery and earthenware used by earlier generations and are found on the ground in Barbados. The rains will bring these shards - sometimes hundreds of years old- to the surface, most commonly in abandoned lots and cane fields. These little mementos of an earlier age are today threatened by extinction by the bulldozers of housing developers and the wheels of all-terrain vehicles, which show tourists out of the way places on the island. The boards, whether surf-, skim-, or windsurfer stand for two things: the vessels that brought, and still bring, people and everything to sustain life to the island, as well as the island of Barbados itself. Over the years I have had help in collecting shards, particularly from members of the National Trust Sunday hikes led originally by Colin Hudson. Some of those members still collect shards for me, and some mornings I will find bags of broken pottery hanging from my gate. An avid diver collected the glass shards under the sea on the West Coast. To all collectors, my most sincere thanks.