Mosaic glass artist Anita Prentice is bringing her unique art form to Gallery 14 as one of two innovative artists in shows running there Nov. 2-26. Prentice, whose framed mosaics show is titled Visions of a Song, will be joined by mixed media collage artist Christine Peloquin, whose exhibit is called Facing Truth. The shows open with a reception from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday Nov. 5 during the First Friday Gallery Stroll.
“The show that I’m doing is kind of two shows in one,” says Prentice. “I curated a song list of classic rock, like Jimi Hendrix, Chris Whitley, the Who, and I’ve done mosaics of the songs.
Then there will be a poetry reading on Saturday of the mosaics in the songs. I’m also showing some landscapes, royal poincianas and some palms, on the other wall. So I’ve got the song wall and the landscape wall. I’m very excited because I love mixing it up.”
Prentice explains that music has always been a part of her life, adding that she attended Pima College in Tucson and Columbia College in Chicago, studying music and theater. “You know, something you can really make a living at,” she says with a laugh.
“I have had the thought for this show in my head for a long time. It just sort of evolved. And then adding the spoken word, it’s kind of nice to mix the different art thoughts together.”
Prentice says she sent the gallery photos of some of the song mosaics, and beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 6, members of the Porch Poets of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation will be reading poems they have written, based on those pieces.
“I’m proud of it. One of the poets that I know who can’t be in town is going to have someone read it. He just sent me the most beautiful poem. It’s an amazing piece of poetry.”
While she uses stained-glass pieces as a medium, Prentice says that her process is dissimilar.
“I glue it to a thin piece of wood and grout it, but the grout lines are very thin. So they’re not heavy, like you would think a mosaic is. Since I do mosaics on wood, you don’t see through these,” says Prentice.
“And I also do something else a little different; I paint the grout. I grout them in white and then I come back, and I paint them in acrylic. So the mosaics are a little different than what you’re accustomed to with stained glass.”
A native of Michigan, Prentice traveled the world before settling in Fort Pierce, where she has lived for the past 35 years in a 16-unit 1926 building called Casa Caprona, which has a rich history of its own.
“Amelia Earhart stayed here for a couple nights, and Beanie Backus had his first show here,” says Prentice. “It actually was apartments; they were going to build this whole new form of living in the 1920s. All you had to bring was your clothes, and it had furniture and art and linens.”
Her career as a glass mosaic artist had a somewhat inauspicious beginning.
“I was dating this guy that only went shopping in Dumpsters for gifts for me, about 30 years ago.
And he found a taxidermy 6-foot marlin in a dumpster and brought it home. I didn’t have any stained glass then, but I covered it in mirrors,” Prentice recalls, explaining that most fish ‘taxidermy’ are now actually fiberglass replicas.
Her next fish was a snook, which has a tell-tale black line down its side, so she purchased some glass pieces from a stained-glass artist, and her works quickly began garnering attention.
“I did a big installation at Immokalee, the estate in north Fort Pierce of the Crayola heiress. I ended up doing a huge above-ground pool that would never have water in it again. So that’s kind of where I cut my teeth; it still exists,” says Prentice, adding that “one thing led to another.”
She has created colorful glass replicas of Highwaymen paintings on the grave markers of five of those famed Black artists, and will soon do one for a sixth, Willie Daniels.
“What I do is I copy one of their paintings in the glass on cement, and then I attach it to their grave. The graves are the type that lay down, so I’ve got quite a nice sized canvas.”
She has also been commissioned to create nearly 200 mosaic benches, that promote the history and culture of St. Lucie County.
“I prefer being challenged. So do I like the big stuff? Yeah. Would I only want to do the big stuff? No. You grow better when you’re challenged.”
She says each project has its own challenges.
“Some of the glass I used in some of these framed pieces is a quarter of your pinky fingernail.
They’re teeny. And then some of them are bigger when you have a bigger space. But you can only get the detail with the really small glass. For some of the really minute detail, I just have a way of doing it with glass, much like a painter does,” Prentice explains.
“I’ve been doing this for 27 years now, so I’ve got some glass,” she says with a laugh. “A woman that was a stained-glass artist who was retiring, never threw a scrap of glass away for 30 years.
Did I go get it? Yes, I did. Did I need it? No, I did not! But I love culling through the boxes of this scrap glass; it just makes me happy.”
She explains that for the larger cement work, such as on benches, she draws the design with chalk until she’s happy with it and will then go over it with a marker before attaching the glass, which she mostly buys wholesale. Prentice uses a type of mortar for the benches and other cement pieces, and a kind of clear glue for the smaller pieces.
“I had to do a lot of trial and error. I learned the hard way, but sometimes it’s best when you teach yourself,” she says.
“I have been able to make a decent living in art. It’s the only way I make a living and it’s going really well, thankfully. I’m happy. I like what I do, and I lead a comfortable life.”
Photos by Kaila Jones
