Anne Oshman: Mosaic Artist
Montclair, 973-222-6937
Anne Oshman was at home with two young kids in a house crawling with workmen when she got the impulse to try her hand at mosaics. Taking tile scraps from the workers renovating the bathrooms—she and her husband had relocated to Montclair from Manhattan after the birth of their second son—Oshman started assembling the broken bits into original designs. “There were workmen everywhere, and I needed an outlet,” she jokes. Some 27 years later, she is one of the state’s top mosaic artists.
Oshman explored the medium for about five years before taking a class to nail down the fine points. She had the innate skills. “The process is very time consuming and labor intensive,” she says. “You have to be meticulous.” As for developing a creative eye, “I’ve had a lifelong love of gardening and art.”
Oshman finds inspiration in everyday images in newspapers and magazines and her own photographs. “There’s delight in capturing details that would otherwise go unnoticed,” she says. “I see the whole in the parts.”
Oshman works in the basement of her art-filled home, using tile, glass or smalti, a material from Mexico that’s “like marble chunks, but glass.” The tiles—called micro mosaic—are tiny 3/8-inch squares, “like the stuff you played with at camp,” she says. They allow for subtle shading and representational imagery. Often, she cuts her materials to create a soft line. The glass, which comes in 2-by-4-foot sheets, and the smalti, need to be handcut. “I have seriously cut my fingers,” she says. But, she explains, “I can’t wear gloves. I have to touch it, feel it. It has to be perfect.”
While some of her projects are large installations—like the wall of the Crescent Parking Deck in Montclair—she primarily fashions pieces for the home, including mantels, backsplashes, furniture, sculpture and fine art. Oshman sells most of her work through her website, but also exhibits in galleries and accepts private commissions.
Prices vary, depending on the work. Her cupcakes, a collection started during the cupcake craze five or six years ago, run $1,200 to $2,800. Fine-art mosaics generally sell for $2,000 to $5,000. “My time commitment to a piece is related not only to its size, but to the specific elements of the design,” Oshman says. The more intricate the work, the more time it takes. “I’m fully absorbed in the details.”
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