Losacker pieces it together for Minnesota West show

• Art

Beth Rickers/Daily Globe Nancy Losacker holds the mosaic of an African pygmy falcon that she created for exhibit at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Worthington campus.

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WORTHINGTON — The sunlight streaming through the windows in the lobby of the Minnesota West Fine Arts Building highlights the iridescent quality of the mosaics hanging on the walls.

“I’m a sucker for shiny things,” said Nancy Losacker, the artist who created the works of art that are currently on display. “Iridescent glass is like an addiction.”

Losacker, a full-time studio artist based in Vermillion, S.D., began working in mosaic about 15 years ago, and it’s become her primary medium, although she occasionally does some drawing and painting..

“I did a lot of concrete casting as a sculptor, and I’d decorate it with broken pottery,” she explained. “It got so I liked the broken pottery more than doing the sculpture.”

But Losacker graduated from working with shards of pottery and tile to colored glass, which she buys in sheets through stained glass material suppliers and cuts up into tiny pieces.

Her mosaics usually start with a sheet of plywood that is coated with a latex sealant. She sketches out her design on the board, kind of like a paint-by-number, but she uses glass to fill in the spaces.

“Then I figure out the colors,” she said. “I’ll take the glass and decide if I need a rectangle, a triangle or a square. It usually takes a couple days to cut all the glass. I like to just cut the glass and have jars full of colored glass in my studio.”

Cutting the glass can be a painstaking and time-consuming process, and Losacker often listens to books on tape while she’s doing it.

“Murder-mysteries are the best,” she said. “They make me stay in the studio. I’ve found that there’s really just a very small creative moment. It’s all really just physical labor, but those small moments are well worth it.”

Once the tiny glass pieces are affixed to the surface, the entire surface is grouted to achieve the finished look. Losacker also tiles and grouts the edges of each board, eliminating the need for framing.

For the show on the Worthington campus of Minnesota West, Losacker created 15 mosaics.

“It’s a small show, but it takes quite a while to do these,” she said.

Many of the pieces depict birds, although Losacker has now transitioned her work into landscapes.

“I don’t know what it is about birds,” she pondered. “When we look at them with the human eye, they’re elusive. We need an aid to see them. There’s such a history of ornithologic paintings, in cultures throughout the world, and I always like to give myself some sort of subject matter to study, because I’m pretty flighty.”

Initially, Losacker sought to capture images of the birds that were right outside her studio window, and the show includes images of the American goldfinch and robins. Through her studies, she became intrigued by birds around the world, such as an African pygmy falcon that soars across one mosaic.

“I have another piece that’s just beak studies,” Losacker noted.

Most recently, Losacker has focused on aerial landscapes, just hinting at the bird’s presence with a section of wing.

“It’s the juxtaposition of how a bird sees a landscape,” she said.

Her work has also been influence by a recent trip to Portugal, and she reproduced a photo of the Côa Valley in mosaic.

“It’s this valley where a hydroelectric dam was stopped because the valley was full of pictographs,” she explained about what is now designated as a World Heritage site. “That’s the last one I did before I got the show together.”

When she begins a new project, Losacker has an image in her mind of how she wants it to look, but her artwork continues to catch her by surprise.

“That’s one of the fun things for me about making art,” she said. “It’s a mystery still, and some things are really encouraging. That makes me want to do it again the next day.”

Losacker’s work will hang in the Fine Arts Building through December. The opening reception will be from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Dec. 2.

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