PAM GIVENS MOSAICS
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MY MOSAIC ALCOVE
When I was a sophomore in high school, the year of pouting and temper, my parents opened a mosaic store: “Mosaic Alcove”.
They loved having that store and it utilized the talents of both my parents. My Dad was an amazing crafts man and artist. He created all the display cases for the store, made beautiful tables for patrons to mosaic, wall plaques that were used for mosaic pieces, he created fabulous designs for customers and accepted commissions. He had a gracious and natural ability to be with people.
My mother was a terrific businesswoman, managing the schedule, keeping the business alive, executing and designing the mosaics for the store, fulling orders, developing the mosaic kits that were the first of their kind and enjoying the people who came to the classes they offered.
Mom kept a scrapbook that I have inherited with photos taken by my dad and his brownie camera (he later became a professional photographer, but you would never know it from the pictures he took during this time),
newspaper clippings are in the scrape book about their store, information about the kits they made, supplies they offered, instruction sheets and pages of the beautiful designs my dad created. It's been a terrific resource for me as my interest in Mosaic Art has increased over the years.
There was lots of excitement about mosaics in the late 50' and 60" and my parents were in on the crest of that wave. They held special guest lecture evenings with Joseph Young and other major artists of the time. Mom took supplies and designs to a variety of women's groups to teach and help bring business to the store. I can remember many discussions about how to attract business or about the next new idea they had. It seemed the next entrepreneurial enterprise was always just around the corner.
According to my mother "this is the only such store in the Los Angeles area, catering solely for the glass-design hobbyist. Recently mosaic tile has been accepted as a means of home decoration and has developed into an interesting and satisfying hobby."
This little bug is the first mosaic I created years ago. Max carved the image in an old piece of wood and then the love for mosaic art captured me.
