Alison Mac Cormaic
Alison Mac Cormaic designs and constructs both architectural mosaics for public spaces and smaller, more intimate works for exhibition. Her practice centres on three elements: working with glass, recording through drawing and celebrating colour. She makes mosaic in both two and three dimensions, most frequently using Mexican smalti, an exquisite, opaque glass, handmade in Mexico. She also draws and paints, using charcoal, ink, gouache and watercolour to develop her source imagery. Alison began exhibiting in 2022 and has shown her work both nationally and internationally. During 2025 she was selected for The Venice Glass Week HUB and Opere dal Mondo, The International Association of contemporary Mosaicists juried exhibition at Ravenna’s 9th Biennial of Contemporary Mosaics.
Finding inspiration in botanical forms, surface-pattern and the human figure, Alison Mac Cormaic employs mosaic to investigate the intersection between nature and culture. She uses Mexican smalti, a unique, handmade, opaque glass with a luminous natural resonance. Building on intuitive colour responses, her work explores the joyful juxtaposition of colour blocks, with the selection, matching and rearranging of elements always a significant element in her process. Exploring a strong agency of personal drawings and mark making, she creates work developed from observation, with a rapidly drawn line or contour often informing a whole mosaic.