By Emily Carter
In 2002, Valerie Meale was painting ceramics at Paint Your Heart Out as a hobby. Now 18 years later, her hobby has grown. She has created more than 30 mosaics and grown tremendously as an artist. Over the years, Meale has made tables, chalkboards and mirrors.
A Growing Artist
Meale would visit the pottery painting studio in Occoquan regularly and grew close to owner Nikki Vandover. Vandover served as a mentor to Meale and suggested she work on more advanced art projects.
“We became really fast friends, and she just had this way of … nudging people artistically a little bit outside of their comfort zone … because she’s a trained (artist), she knows how to guide people through that process … So we started doing mosaics in Paint Your Heart Out, and I just sort of took it from there,”
Meale said.
When Meale makes her pieces she’ll often work in her basement. She also stores art supplies in her laundry room. She says it is full of glass, ceramic and porcelain tile, glass beads, copper wire and adhesive.
Meale’s Process
Meale only makes about one or two pieces a year, because she doesn’t work on them full time. When she does work on her mosaics, she tries to plan out her pieces, but sometimes they have a mind of their own and Meale’s finished product is different from what she envisioned in the beginning.
“In recent mosaics I’ve done more like planning and drawing, but I’m drawing them out roughly and then starting to fill in. But there’s a point always that they sort of take on a life, a direction of their own,” Meale said. “So sometimes I just hit a point where no matter how much I design them and have the design in my head, sometimes they just take on a different direction and I just go with it.”
Sometimes, Meale can find herself in an artistic rut or mental roadblock when she’s working on her mosaics. When this happens, she’ll practice Zentangle, an exercise of drawing intricate patterns on pieces of paper.
“The method sort of dissipates the white page syndrome, where you sit down to a blank page and don’t really know where to start,” Meale said. “The methodology sort of reaches that at the very beginning, and (a roadblock) isn’t even a thing anymore. That method and utilizing it has sort of seeped into the way that I do everything else.”
The Finished Products
Meale works on her creations part-time and creates one to two pieces per year. Photo courtesy Valerie Meale
When Meale is done making a piece, she’ll typically share a picture of it on her personal Facebook account. She receives a lot of positive feedback from her friends and family when she shares her work.
“They’re easy on the eyes, and I don’t do a lot of, like, controversial subject matters. They’re just cute and fun and pretty, so people react very positively,” said Meale.
Meale will give her finished mosaics to her friends or will display them in her home. The only piece Meale hasn’t kept for herself or given to her loved ones was a table donated to the Good Shepherd Housing Foundation in 2016.
Meale never plans to sell her pieces. She says once she starts making art for money and selling her pieces to buyers, making mosaics will no longer be a creative outlet for her.
“I do it for myself almost strictly for the creative process. I mean, I love the comments that I get, and I love people seeing them, but it’s not about keeping the (art) to myself… The reason that I create is because of the creative outlet,” Meale said. “[I think selling my pieces] changes the creative process. I’m [making art] for the creative process and to tap into my creativity.”
Out of the dozens of mosaics Meale has made, her favorite piece is a mirror she made in 2018.
“My favorite piece is a mirror that I have downstairs that I bought at a thrift store for like three dollars. And the frame of it is somebody like pieced together pieces of oak molding. But I encrusted one corner of it with beads and tile, and that turned out really cool. That’s my favorite piece,” Meale said.
Meale thinks it’s important for everyone — especially during quarantine — to tap into their creative side.
“Even if you feel like you’re not creative, it’s so important to tap into some kind of creating something, even if it’s just cooking. Creating something is really important to keeping your sanity,” Meale said.
After 18 years, Meale still loves creating mosaics and she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
Emily Carter is a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in Multimedia Journalism. She is currently the Lifestyles Editor at Virginia Tech’s student-run paper, the Collegiate Times. When she is not writing, she is either dancing alone to Taylor Swift or cooking herself a giant bowl of pasta.
