Door County Galleries and Art – Beauty Out of Brokenness

Artist Kim Wozniak with one of her Spirit Poles.

In Wisconsin, we’re used to uneven roads and sidewalks; the snow and ice of our bitter winters are with us year-round in the form of cracks and potholes in the surfaces we use to get around. Pulaski-based artist Kim Wozniak has grown up looking at cracks in Wisconsin sidewalks and recently has decided to re-examine them in a new light – by making art out of them.

Wozniak’s new exhibit, “Beneath the Surface,” will open at the Flying Pig Gallery in Algoma on September 6. In these pieces, Wozniak uses a combination of concrete and mosaic materials to create what she calls “concrete wall art” – cracked slabs of concrete, the cracks filled with colored glass and other materials. Among other filler items, Wozniak uses smalti, traditional glass tiles made primarily in Italy and Mexico.

To make these pieces, Wozniak casts lightweight concrete in molds and then breaks the forms she’s created.

“To some extent, the breaks are my idea, and some of them are the cement’s idea,” she laughs. Then she fills in those cracks with smalti or other materials, which she collects wherever she can find them.

“Clogged Artery” by Kim Wozniak.

“I just find materials – I don’t always know what I’ll do with it; I just know that I like it. Washers, old jewelry parts – I just have collections of jars of stuff, and the more I can get of it the better.

“My materials in some ways are very traditional, but by adding the concrete to it, I make it non-traditional,” Wozniak says. “What I’m trying to do is take people out of what people have generally seen as mosaics.”

Wozniak’s journey toward reinventing something as pedestrian as concrete began as a child growing up in northeastern Wisconsin, where her family’s remote lifestyle taught her conservation and pragmatism.

“We didn’t have immediate access to a lot of things, and I think that created a kind of resourcefulness in me to use things you can’t get easily or might cast away.” From that rural childhood, Wozniak went to school for art. She didn’t graduate, but later went back to school to learn architectural drafting and design.

“Resurrection” by Kim Wozniak.

Unhappy in a corporate job and spending her free time on art projects, Wozniak finally became a professional artist in 2002. Her father had passed away halfway through the process of renovating a new cottage, and Wozniak and her siblings were left to complete the project.

Wozniak remembers, “My brother thought it would be really cool to put a compass in the hardwood floor of the great room. I looked at purchasing one, but it was so expensive, so I thought, ‘Well, I can draw a compass.’ So with my drafting background I drew the design in the tile, and we did it in the kitchen instead.

“Then I went to work on Tuesday and got laid off from my job. I was ecstatic; I’d been trying to figure out how to leave for a long time. So I went up to the cottage, started putting little pieces of tile together, and that was the beginning of this addiction – using other things to make art.”

Wozniak knew it would be difficult to make a living on art alone, so she also started an online business selling mosaic materials to interested artists.

“Blyssful Abyss” by Kim Wozniak.

“Now it’s sort of all-consuming,” Wozniak laughs. “Either I’m doing mosaics, or I’m selling mosaic materials to other artists.”

Though her dual life as an artist and businesswoman still keeps her busy, recently Wozniak has found more time than ever to devote to her art. People are responding well to her art; she is currently working on two artistic commissions, and her work will hang at the Flying Pig from September 6 until October 5.

“I think people are drawn in,” Wozniak says. “One thing I love is that when people see my art, they say, ‘How did she do that?’”

Though Wozniak does not always intend to embed a specific meaning in her artwork, she often finds that people draw their own meanings out of her broken slabs of concrete.

“People used to look at the clouds and make things out of them. Now they’re looking at cracks in the sidewalk and making things out of them,” Wozniak says simply.

Specifically, Wozniak sees her work as to make beauty out of brokenness.

“I think a lot of it, for me,” she says, “is that everything is broken. Finding something beautiful under the broken parts – that’s the part I think is cool.”

The Flying Pig, located at N6975 Highway 42 in Algoma, is open daily, 9 am – 6 pm, May through October and Friday through Monday, 10 am – 5 pm, November through April. For more information call 920.487.9902 or visit http://www.theflyingpig.biz.

For more information on Kim Wozniak’s art visit http://www.reclamationstudios.com.