Jane Russell
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Jane was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked as a school psychologist in the East Bay until she retired and discovered a love for the colors, textures, and reflective light of glass mosaics. She spends her time making mosaics, enjoying family and friends, and taking in the beauty and culture of the Bay Area. Jane often creates a story for each of her mosaics, a story that is written in her mind as the creation progresses. With her background in psychology, she often thinks of her art as a playful inkblot test involving nature, ambiguity, abstractionism, and surrealism. She is delighted when people see something in her work that she hadn’t herself considered or intended.
Jane first publicly exhibited her work at Burning Man 2013 and her “Fire Dance” mosaic was subsequently featured at the Burning Man headquarters in San Francisco. Jane has exhibited her work at the California Institute of Mosaic Art in Berkeley; Snapshot Mosaics in Oakland; Diablo Fine Art Gallery in Walnut Creek; Martinez Gallery in Martinez, Stained Glass Garden in Berkeley; and currently has selected pieces at the Placerville Art Gallery, 352 Main Street, Placerville, California. Jane’s mosaics were selected for inclusion in the 2016 juried Contemporary Mosaic Artists Summit Exhibition in Ashland, Oregon, and in the 2017 Left Coast Juried Exhibition at the Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica, California.
Jane was selected to participate in the 2018 San Francisco General Hospital Foundation’s fundraiser, “Hearts in San Francisco” series. She contributed by mosaicing one of the 17″ heart sculptures. Sales of the Hearts raise funds for vital initiatives at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Jane currently lives with her husband in Pleasant Hill, California. I enjoy the meditative qualities of creating mosaic art, but I am also drawn to the great versatility and challenges of the medium. I tend to create a story for each of the mosaics that I create — a story that is written in my mind as the creation progresses. Much of my work is abstract or surreal in nature, but I also create semi-representational art. 
I tend toward ambiguity in my pieces, and I enjoy it when folks share their personal reactions to my creations. Glass has great appeal for me because its reflectivity changes depending upon the lighting and the angle of viewing. Different glass has different reflective qualities, and the challenge is to find the most effective combinations. I use an assortment of materials, analogous in some ways to the pallet of a traditional canvas artist. The combinations of colors and textures of glass can spark my creative process, along with the shapes that I can create. Science and the natural world is a starting point for many of my mosaics, although I often take reality and tweak it. I enjoy interjecting humor into my work, and I sometimes try to come up with playful titles. I also may use this medium to make serious comments on our world or the environment, and I pay attention to the emotional content and work to elicit certain feelings.
