About Claire
As a family doctor with over 20 years experience of practicing medicine I never imagined that I would be opening a mosaic studio. My path to this studio has been long and forged with heartache. I started working with mosaics after the tragic deaths of my two beautiful girls and their father in the Alaska Airlines plane crash in 2000.
We have been doing mosaic projects for over eight years now in my home. Memorial mosaic tables and garden stones have been made, over the years, by friends and family in memory and honor of my beloved daughters as we gather together on their birthdays. My backyard is gradually filling with a patchwork quilt of mosaic pavers, made with love and remembrance. As I slowly begin to appreciate the value of this ritual in my own life, it seems a natural progression to now try to expand this experience and to offer it out for others.
There is, I believe, some real meaning in the process of breaking up glass and tiles into small pieces and then putting them back together in a new form, over and over again. It is both meditative and creative. There is something soothing about the process. It is also a way to be with other people — sharing the space and working side-by-side but not requiring direct conversation. It is my hope that this studio space will be able to provide a safe, creative, comforting environment for people to work in.
About Mazie, et al
Seattle Mosaic Arts has grown out of the experience created by a large and incredibly creative and supportive group of people. It is not possible to separate one from the other.
I, personally, and Seattle Mosaic Arts, as a studio, am supported, encouraged, and egged-on daily by my partner, Mazie, who likes to call herself “the brawn” behind the project. My mother, Jacqueline Barnett, a local professional artist and the one responsible for teaching us mosaics in the first place, is clearly “the brains” behind this. I am also surrounded by other family members, both immediate and extended, as well as friends who have become family after so many years of accompanying me on this hard path, and this impressive group of loyal, dedicated and generous people have contributed, and continue to contribute, in endless ways, to the creation of this studio.
This studio was created out of the support and love from my community. I can only hope that this sense of community will continue to expand and flourish in this new form, widening the net with which we can all support and encourage each other.