Mo Ringey-Gareau

Posted by: Jared McGinley and Francis Tainter

Mo Ringey-Gareau is an artist who works mainly in mosaics of tempered glass. Her work has been shown in the Springfield Museum of Fine Art, all over the internet, as well as in the book, Mosaic: Finding Your Voice. Mo’s passion is in working with a material as unpredictable as broken glass, and in all the different ways a piece of glass can break and be used in a piece.

In recent years, Mo has been working on a collection of tempered glass “Self-Portraits” out of objects that have a purpose. She cites her reason for choosing these objects as that they are all part of her history, that she is taking all of the memories she has of these things, and rearranges them in the form of her glass medium. She uses found objects to create all of this work, as well as donations from friends and fans. 

Morning Glory Fridge, 2006 (Above), Mailbox, 2005 (Right), The artist herself (Below)

 

 

Mo Began her career as a painter, but that changed on one fateful morning outside her apartment in Boston. She left her building to find her car window smashed out. This was not uncommon where she was living at the time, but this time it happened to her. Every morning she had walked over these broken windows, dismissing it as someone else’s problem, but this time it was different. She was struck by some new quality of the glass, something hopeful and bright. This was the beginning of Mo’s fascination with the medium of broken glass.

Her inspiration for these “Self- Portraits” comes from a historical perspective. It is an “Homage to an era when women had few options… Had I announced circa 1940, that I refused to iron the family’s clothes and, that I further intended to spend the next few months smashing glass and gluing it to the ironing board… I might have been committed to an institution”^{1                                                                                                   Bidet, 2006}

Mo cites her major influences as the works of Marcel Duchamp and Van Gogh. She can be reached at Moringey@gmail.com, and her work can be found on moringey.com. The book mentioned above can be found at http://www.brithammer.com/books

1:Taken in part from moringey.com

All photos courtesy of Mo Ringey-Gareau