Vanessa Mebel

Business Name: Beautifully Broken
Type of Work: Anything & everything

Contact Information

Email: vanessamebel@icloud.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beautifullybrokenrecycledmosaics

Biography

I consider myself to be an artist who has a good sense of re-imagining what something broken or discarded can be transformed into. All of the items I re-imagine are made from found, abandoned or donated items. Largely, scrap glass, old doors, windows, reclaimed wood, fallen trees, junk jewelry, old bottles, glasses, rusty junk or anything else that happens to wash up on the shores of my life. The art itself is usually very simple, happy and uncomplicated. Much like me.

However, on the flip side, I have been known to create some more meaningful, in-depth pieces. I was asked to create some Madonna and Child works out of glass and pieces of jewelry from loved ones who have passed over. Those pieces were each a labor of love. But each one has given me chills as I placed someone’s personal items into the piece. Each of them was a complete privilege to create for those families. Another very complex commissioned piece was from a man who wanted me to duplicate a glass version of his girlfriend’s tattoo, which was a beautiful black, white and grey mermaid.

So, to me, if something is broken, you’ve got to try to put it back together in some form or another to make it useful and live again. That’s what recycled art is to me. You can take something that other people have thrown away and don’t want and make it into something somebody else might enjoy. That gives me great pleasure.