Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christine Moss. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Christine, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
When I first moved to Woodstock in 2009, a new friend introduced me to the world of mushrooms. We’re surrounded by forests and there are so many amazing natural treasures to be discovered. I became obsessed with mushrooms and mushroom hunting and mushroom everything. Even though edibles are always a great find I was really interested in the variety and colors and beauty of all the different types of fungi. I became a member of the Mid Hudson Mycological Association (MHMA) and went on walks learning as much as possible. That’s when I started painting mushroom portraits. I began listening to them, connecting to them and the forest on a spiritual level. I observed and collected and photographed them. At the end of 2019 I became the president of the MHMA and then 2020 happened. I remained president for all of lockdown until 2022.
During this time, I began focusing on completing my latest project, The Mushroom Oracle. I gathered all of the paintings I had been making of mushrooms and self published a deck of oracle cards. I listened, studied and meditated with each mushroom to create the guide book that goes with the cards. My intention was to keep this as a spiritual art project and it’s very close to my heart. My focus is about connecting with the wild nature within us all. The guide book is printed zine style on my home printer and then hand painted with watercolors and mushroom stamps, and then hand stitched together. I have published two small runs already and will do a third printing for this coming summer season 2024.
This summer I will participate again in the Phoenicia Festival of the Arts organized by Christina Varga. Last year I sold my mosaics and offered Mushroom Oracle Readings. It was a great experience to share my project with so many people and the feedback has been really inspiring. This year I plan to offer two workshops during the festival, one a paid workshop where participants create their own personal mushroom cards that can be added to the deck. The workshop will come with a deck of cards and all the materials needed. The second workshop will be a free one (or donations appreciated) family friendly mushroom printing with real mushrooms and ink on paper. More details will be posted on my instagram.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Art is something different and personal for everyone. For me, it is the way in which I live my life. I have a diverse interest in a variety of mediums, but it is all one Art. Learning little bits of everything influences and directs how I express myself. Painting, Mosaic and Pottery are my main three mediums, but I also work with collage, food, flowers and I am a candlemaker and alchemist for Candlestock in Woodstock, NY.
I feel fortunate to have been encouraged to be an artist from a very young age. My grandfather would always have new and different art supplies for me to try. We would scour garage sales and flea markets together in rural Pennsylvania finding interesting things that could be used creatively. He would hold something up to me and ask, “What can you make with this?” He had a woodworking shop in the cellar and he taught me how to use different tools safely. When I was a teenager, he helped me to make my very first mosaic. I used a Dremel to shape the rock hard ceramic tiles into shapes, glued them down and grouted the spaces between. I still have that first piece.
My grandmother would often make a handmade dough from flour and water and I would sit for hours with her in the kitchen making miniature sculptures.
When I gave birth to my second child, I decided that I couldn’t sit in an office all day anymore. I wasn’t happy in the 9-5 world and I kept feeling like there was a life I was supposed to be living and creating somewhere else out there. I taught myself to make mosaics and created my company Joyful Mosaic. This was in 2001. I made a lot of mistakes. I did a lot of work for “the exposure” as payment. Did it pay off? In retrospect both yes and no. There were stronger boundaries I could have drawn but I also learned a great deal about what I am capable of. I did my first showing at the Hoboken Arts festival in New Jersey. We lived in Jersey City in the middle of an amazing and vibrant art scene. I entered every open call possible and showed my work in galleries and cafes.
I took part time jobs to make money while developing my mosaic business. Through a catering gig, I got to know some people at The Newark Museum in Newark, NJ. That’s when I found out about, applied to and was accepted into their Artist in Residence program. It was the best thing that could have happened. I became a teaching artist through this program and shared everything I had learned about mosaics with students in the Newark public school system. I think I taught in about 15 different schools over the course of five years. Some projects were individual student mosaics. Others were installations on the walls on school grounds. I also branched out and taught mosaics at local senior centers and at a summer arts camp for kids. I began getting paid commission work, one of the largest being a mosaic installation of a garden in Pershing Field Park in Jersey City. Having these types of jobs allowed me to be a sort of working stay at home mom. The teaching schedule lined up with my kids school schedule. I made mosaics at night on the kitchen table, the bed (yikes, yes the bed), the floor, anywhere with a large enough flat surface to work on. I brought both of my kids to every art opening. It was chaotic but I did my best to care for them, I love them more than anything in this world.
By 2008, both of my grandparents had passed away and I had a very small amount of money. It wasn’t enough to buy a house but it was enough to make a major move and start over again. Jersey City was getting dangerous for my kids as they were getting older. In 2009, we found a rental upstate in Woodstock, NY and we were so excited to have so many rooms and a garden out front and in the back the Mill Stream ran through.
We moved in, just me and the kids and all of a sudden the reality of having to start over all over again hit hard. It was slow going. The art scene up here was incredibly different from urban Jersey City/ lower Manhattan and there was a steep learning curve. But, I now had a real art studio of my own, nature outside my door and little by little I began to meet local artists. The best part was I lived right across the street from Christina Varga’s gallery on Tinker Street. I truly cherish her friendship.
I got a job at the Garden Cafe, a vegan place in Woodstock. As an artist I seemed to be really good at cooking. I was promoted from line cook to Sous Chef and then when Pam Brown sold the cafe to Lea Haas in 2015, I was promoted to head chef. Cooking vegan was incredibly creative and I loved it but my time in the studio basically disappeared. Suddenly I was a Chef and food was my medium of expression. Chef life was very demanding and in spite of being surrounded by beautiful organic food, my health began to turn downwards from the stress and I really missed my studio. When the pandemic shut everyone down, I decided it was time for me to start over once again.
Today, I continue to make mosaics, I have done a few commissions again of smaller pieces. I am currently working on some 3-dimensional mini mosaics onto objects (treasures) I have found in the forest. I continue to work on and refine the Mushroom Oracle. I have also started up watercolor painting and I absolutely love the fluid, randomness of the pigments dispersing across the page. It is a playful opposite to the controlled precision of adhering tiles.
Every so often I will sign up for open studio time and work with clay. I spent a lot of studio time at the former Freehold Art Exchange in Freehold NY, throwing pots and hand building little houses and mushrooms (of course). Gardening is also a big part of my life now. I have always been inspired by Monet’s lifestyle and last year I built a flower garden on my patio for the purpose of having an outdoor studio space to paint and create in. I have project tote bags filled with materials for when the weather is good. I bring it all outside with a cup of coffee and work surrounded by the plants and wildlife. Overlook mountain is visible in the distance, watching over me.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Making art for money vs making art because it’s what I’m supposed to do and the money may or may not come from that. And that’s ok.
The mindset I was raised with and the beginning vision of Joyful Mosaic was to earn my livelihood from making art. That involved a whole lot of work not art related. It was business, which I had no experience in. It was contracts with spaces, I lost a few pieces along the way because of lack of experience. It was time spent hustling for sales and commissions. It was self employed taxes. When we moved to Woodstock I tried to recreate what had been working in Jersey City but it just wasn’t working up here. Hence, my shift to full time chef for a while. It was still creative and I needed to support my family. I absolutely appreciate that experience and it’s what ultimately led me to discovering that I needed to make art, not for money but for my soul’s purpose. For that I needed an income that wasn’t connected to my art or my identity in order for me to really dig down deep and start creating again. I like the anonymity of making candles, I have a great boss and a flexible schedule that allows me to be myself. This is the most satisfied I have ever been creating art because there’s no external survival pressure placed upon it. One of the gifts of getting older is perspective on where my time is best spent. I still love to show and sell my work, it feels really good that someone has connected with the emotions of a piece I have made, that I am able to bring something of beauty to someone else. And who knows, maybe one day it will shift and swing back to being my main source of income again but for now, I like this freedom.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I appreciate knowing that I see things differently. I used to think everyone noticed things the way I did, little details of color, light and shape or composition everywhere. Pieces of conversations overheard turning into poetry. I thought that was normal, that everyone filtered life in this way. My favorite example of learning that I see life through an artists eyes happened in high school. I was a student at High School of Art and Design in NYC and was hanging out with a group of friends in Greenwich Village in the 1980’s. There was one person with us from out side of the school, not an artist. Someone in our group saw something on the street and pointed it out. I don’t even remember exactly what it was, it could have been an old doll on top of a garbage can in front of some colorful flyers, something like that and we all thought it was hilarious and excitingly absurd. The non-artist in the group was baffled, they didn’t get it. We tried to explain our reaction, but it made no sense. To them, it was no big deal, something to be passed by. That was a big lesson for me, that the reason it was “normal” to see things the way I do was because I was in a school surrounded by people who interpreted life the same way I did. Outside of that circle, the weird beauty of the world can go unappreciated and it’s my joy to translate these visions into art.
Contact Info:
- Website: christinemoss.crevado.com
- Instagram: @a.little.fern.house
Image Credits
All images by Christine Moss