Artist Statement

Jane Pettit is a self-taught mosaic artist who started selling her creations as an adolescent in Vermont.

She knew she’d found her ideal art form when she could combine three loves: making people laugh, combining disparate parts into a pleasing whole and recycling old things for new uses. Her mosaics combine more traditional tile, smalti and stained glass with vintage dishes, ceramic and glass objects of all sorts, found objects, jewelry, shells, sea glass, stones and paint. Although each piece starts with a vision, it’s an exploration of texture, shape, color and meaning that takes on its own personality as it evolves.

Current interests are getting scraps of pottery to express emotion and creating concrete, fiberglass and metal substrates for her garden sculpture. Her latest series has taken her into the world of metal, rivets and auto paint, thanks to a scrap of cast-off BX cable reminiscent of Medusa’s headgear.

Jane exhibits at The Zenith Gallery in DC, The Rehoboth Art League and Angel Eyes Gallery in Rehoboth, Delaware. Her sculpture Summer’s Welcome was selected for inclusion in the Zenith Foundation’s 2009 calendar to benefit The Capital Area Food Bank. She was awarded the Juror’s Award for Excellence at The 2005 Rehoboth Art Show. She has exhibited at Art Romp, DC, Peace Now at The Warehouse Gallery, DC and at "Art-O-Matic 2006, 2008 and 2009. She’s a participating artist in the Girls Gotta Run Foundation and has been in exhibits in The Phoenix Gallery in NYC, The Sewall-Belmont House, Strathmore Hall and Politics and Prose.

Jane has exhibited at numerous shows and events in the Washington area, including The St. Albans Holiday House Tour, The Junior League Show, The National Cathedral Flower Mart, Clifton Days, Holton Arms Harvest Festival and the Georgetown Visitation Holiday Show.

Jane has done private commissions for Washington area residents. She teaches at Brookside Gardens and in her barn studio in Myersville, MD, pictured below. She has recently studied with mosaic icons Sherri Warner-Hunter and Ilana Shafir.