A look at our third staff member, Lydia Nichole. Lydia provides beautiful photos for our social media, is Azule's mosaic apprentice, and provides artistry to the place. Azule is an inspiration point for artists of all stripes, and we are fortunate when they use their artistry to contribute to Azule's growth.
Azule is a place of possibilities. If you’ve ever spent time there, you know what I mean.
My name is Lydia Nichole and I am honored to be Camille’s mosaic apprentice and co-conspirator in the colorful additions of patterns and images that adorn Azule. We are working though the medium of placing glass, tile, stone, shell and all manner of broken things together and grouting them in.
Otherwise known as Mosaic.
The poetic art of taking broken things and giving them new life, new form. And this is a very specific artistic mind: the ability to recognize beauty in the broken and the call to give it new purpose. Handmade redemption. Exquisite decomposition. Replant the roots and awaken the vision. It seems to me that this is a creative philosophy that all contributors to Azule hold dear. It is reminiscent of the Japanese craft and philosophy of Kintsugi, wherein broken things are mended with gold. It is about embracing the beauty of flaws and honoring them as precious.
This reflects back into the human journey. How we all must choose to learn from our failures, to honor them, to give them purpose... as if these deep learning experiences were the very chisel that sculpts the form of our being. Let it be so!
Leonard Cohen said: “There is a crack, a crack in everything...That's how the light gets in.”
And this is how I see Azule... a crack in the shell of the system of this world that lets the light in. A place that welcomes all to come and create in this light.
It is a medley of many elements: the flexibility and precision of Camille’s vision, a place where skilled craftsmanship meets found and salvaged things. This place stands not in defiance of consumerism but in harmony, showing another way to approach the manifestation of the creative process.
An art beholden to necessity, guided by the tides of the materials on hand and inspired by the very process of living. Through her work, Camille offers a poignant lesson on the art of living. Let us all listen deeper.