Tiny tiles of style

Andrew Mathieson
ART, as creative soul Caroline Hawkins can testify, is a subjective thing.
But the colourful pieces are wasted hung on the walls of stuffy galleries.
This mosaic artist has rather a practical spin on the craft that dates its history back to Roman times.
Reaching from behind her chair, she lifts a favourite mosaic.
“This is one of my early pieces that is still sitting on the floor,” Caroline says.
“Well, this is going to be the splashback for my kitchen, I keep telling my husband.”
The mosaic depicts the values that Caroline grew with inside the kitchen.
A couple of Cornish milk jugs, reflective of her upbringing in the south-west of England, are central to its theme.
She has already collected about 200 pieces of the blue-and-white striped crockery since she was a child.
Dotted with thousands of crushed swimming pool tiles, it proves the practicality of mosaics.
The works have turned into something of an obsession around the family’s Anglesea home.
The floor of one of their two showers is filled with beautiful mosaic tiles.
Another upstairs, still in progress, will have a more elaborate design and promises to resemble a celebrated Roman cathedral.
Water features outside and coffee tables inside are filled with the best Italian glass.
The shiny tiles, though, eventually have taken their toll.
Environmental concerns are pushing the artist away from the unsustainable practice.
Friends still give Caroline broken-down, recycled tiles but a lot of the materials come from closer to home. She points to a mosaic portrait on the lounge wall.
“See the piece up there?” Caroline asks.
“That’s actually using bark – it’s what I’ve been doing all year.
“I am now really exploring how to incorporate sustainability and the environment into my art.”
From her back doorstep Caroline watches bark falling off the trees and thinks of a way to make use of the natural colours.
No one has used bark. Well, not this way.
She’s quick to sum up mosaic art among all the gum trees.
“It is about the patterns,” Caroline quips.
“Really, you could use any materials.”
Still, Caroline is acutely aware of the long history of mosaics.
She draws a long breath and her tone rises a notch.
“It came from centuries ago,” she starts.
“Rome was probably most well-known for it and Pompeii has incredible mosaics.
“We’re going back 2000 to 3000 years.
“Those pieces are somehow still in existence, whereas painting from that era aren’t.”
An art and design university graduate, the mother-of-two only took up the art around 1995.
Despite growing up around century-old mosaic architecture dating back to the Roman conquests, Caroline didn’t care much for it until after immigrating to Australia.
“There is quite a few beautiful mosaics there, but I didn’t go and see them,” she reveals, embarrassed.
“I’ve been back to Bath since though, but I can’t say living in England was my inspiration.”
That came after first witnessing the Torquay analemmatic sundial.
It drove a passion inside, despite spending 50 hours on most works.
An intricate fireplace piece once took around 250 painstaking hours, she claims.
“So it’s very hard to actually make any money out of it,” Caroline laughs, “that’s probably why I do the teaching.”
Caroline is most at home when leading several community mosaic projects and also running a mosaic artists’ group at the Anglesea Art House.
The plan next is to turn Anglesea into a mosaic haven and an unmistakable tourist attraction.
Large pieces scattered throughout the town, each telling its own story relating to Anglesea’s history, environment and its people, will lead to one large, mosaic sculpture.
“We would like it be the iconic image for Anglesea,” she announces.
“You come here to see the mosaics.
“That’s my dream.”