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Art and Artists in the Garden 3: Rosemary Rizzo

© Carol Wallace

When you take a course in mosaics, they tell you to start small. Rosemary Rizzo did - creating the stepping stones that lead to her front porch steps. Stepping stones are a great project for beginners as they allow you a lot of freedom and won't cost you a fortune to make even if you blow it. But Rosemary didn't blow it. In fact she created a lovely portrait of a pink flamingo as her very first project.

"From Trash to Treasures" is her motto - and under her creative direction a lot of things that most people would toss away without a glance became not only functional but also very attractive. Who but Rosemary could find a discarded mannequin's arm and turn it into a welcome sign - and a very pretty one at that! She looks at the world in a creative way, rarely seeing things merely for what they are, but for what they can be.

Most of her own creations are mosaics. Instead of crying over broken plates, Rosemary puts them to use, as she did with the stepping stone. When she ran out of her own cracked china, she eyeballed the intact pieces speculatively - but thought better of it. Instead she haunted the flea markets and garage sales in search of not only old plates but any object that she could give a new start in life with a bit of her own special brand of TLC.

She transformed a rather ordinary concrete turtle into one with a beautiful shell made from bits of broken china. Another small project was a butterfly feeder made from a terra cotta flowerpot, also covered in what might otherwise been discarded china.

Keep it small, remember?

From there she progressed to other projects. You can almost imagine her casting her eye around the garden wondering what she could transform next. A watering can was one thing she spotted and turned from a utilitarian piece of galvanized metal to a functional piece of art.

Trash to treasures, remember?

In fact there are two different art forms used on the watering can. If you look closely at the "jewels" that decorate the watering can you can see that they contain little portraits pink flamingos. Using instructions from Sanctuary Glass and Mosaics she designed and made those jewels herself, probably as a way of sneaking a few more of her favorite birds into the garden décor.

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