Mosaic Candy Shop



Mosaic Candy Shop

About The Artist

Mercedes Austin • Minneapolis, MN
Ceramics

Take a Pee Wee Herman devotee, add a touch of Tarantino, and a couple Lisa Frank stickers and you have Mosaic Candy Shop founder Mercedes Austin. Dedicated to the sustainability practices of Mercury Mosaics, the mother brand, Mosaic Candy Shop celebrates mosaics as a form of self-expression, productive leisure, and self-care, embracing a community of all kinds of crafters. Mercedes Austin is an artist who owns a building supply company. Those building supplies just happen to be hand-crafted artisan tiles that find their way into homes, businesses, and spaces around the world. Mosaic Candy Shop fulfills the sustainability practice that no tile shall be left behind, and there’s room for all in the mosaic.



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Q&A with the Artist

Tell us how your work is made.

Each piece of tile in the kits is part of a story that begins in our Minnesota workshops. Each kit confection is handpicked using upcycled, reclaimed misfit tile from the Mercury Mosaic Studio. These kits let every scrap and misfit have its moment of beauty.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

I'm passionate about this specific project because it takes my personal art: Mosaics, and transforms that into a kit that invites others to create, too. The mosaics I personally create (which I have online: www.mercedesaustinart.com). I draw from a supply chain (Mercury Mosaics' manufacturing misfits) to stock the tile for the kits. It's this intentional loop that has taken me about 21 years to construct.

What is something unique about you or your practice?

One of the collections in Mosaic Candy Shop is called "New Day" and the collection itself is meant to be a reminder that each day is a new day and we can start fresh. What's unexpected is that the arch shape in the landscape comes from my Large Moroccan Fish Scales being repurposed into the sky and a Penny Round tile got turned into the sun (or moon, depending on how you interpret it).