Great Lakes

Marjorie Kreilick is a pioneering artist of midcentury abstract mosaics. She taught in UW-Madison’s Art Department from 1953 until 1991, where she was the department’s first female artist faculty member. This mosaic shows her innovative technique that combined natural beach pebbles and stones, collected on the shores of Lake Erie, with traditional marble tesserae and smalti (glass tesserae), creating a richly textured surface. Organic materials are incorporated in this mosaic in a presciently postmodern way: the naturally shaped beach stones create the rocky shoreline of the lake that is the subject of the mosaic itself.