Teresa Hollmeyer's first works of art were left on the ground for her family to find.
"When I was a child, I'd make these arrangements with sticks and stones and rusted farm machinery. Whatever I could find," said Hollmeyer, who grew up on Twin Lakes Farm, a 100-acre poultry farm in Concord, just north of Charlotte. "I just arranged them there on the ground. I was really into jigsaw puzzles, too."
The shapes and textures that intrigued the young girl still fascinate the 40-year-old woman, who for nearly a decade has turned heads with her eye-popping glass mosaics.
While Hollmeyer is a regular at the annual Festival in the Park in Charlotte, this summer she ventures to the Triangle for the first time with an appearance at Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival in Cary, on Aug. 28.
Despite her childhood interest in art, Hollmeyer left it behind in early adulthood, focusing on work in special education and then motherhood.
A mural inspired her return.
"About 15 years ago, I saw a piece of public art, a mosaic mural, being done in Charlotte. I worked nearby and would pass by and see the artist working on it. I was fascinated. And I thought: I can do that."
Using a basic mosaic book from the library, Hollmeyer armed herself with glazed tiles, concrete and adhesive, and made garden mosaics, including pots and steppingstones.
"There were good enough that people kept telling me I should be selling them," she said.
The allure of glass
As a newly divorced working mother who needed the extra income, she decided to give it a try.
Hollmeyer became a fixture at City Center Green Market in downtown Charlotte, successfully selling standard-fare flower pots, planters and steppingstones.
A gift of a box of scrap glass from a stained-glass artist opened the artist's eyes.
"With tile, you're limited to the colors in the pieces," she said. "With the glass, it's translucent and really catches the light and shimmers. I love shiny things. When I started to use glass, that's when I say that my hobby turned into my art."
About that time, in 2002, Hollmeyer started collecting antique sash windows for a greenhouse she still plans to build.
"One day I was outside and looking at the window and working on a mosaic project, and I thought: There's got to be a way to adhere this stained glass to this window and make it look like stained glass.' "
Through trial and error and "making a lot of bad windows," she succeeded.
"The response was incredible," she said. "I'm not saying the piece was incredible, but people were crazy about it. After I sold the first one, I stopped making all the other things from before."
Unexpected views
Her works of colored glass affixed to clear glass at first glance look like stained glass. As the viewer gets closer, small shards of glass are visible, blending to make an unusually painterly mosaic.
Most of Hollmeyer's images are from the outdoors - flowers, trees, branches, landscapes - a nod to a childhood spent outside.
"My signature work is a circle tree. I sell so many of those that I do get a little tired of making them, but that's my bread and butter," she said. "I just finished a commissioned piece that had a green tree, purple tree, and yellow trees, with reds and gold for the land."
In 2004, Hollmeyer remarried. She continued to do her art on the side while working at LifeSpan, a nonprofit organization in Charlotte for developmentally disabled children and adults.
"I worked in the art room, so it tied into my special ed and art backgrounds," she said. "I loved that job."
In her home studio
After the birth of their twin boys in 2007, she and her husband, Richmond Hollmeyer, moved to south Charlotte and she turned to motherhood and art full time.
For several years, she rented studio space at Green Rice Gallery in Charlotte, which continues to sell her work.
"I found I got distracted a lot, but it was a cool environment," she said.
Hollmeyer now works in a corner of the family room, where she has to put away supplies and vacuum daily. By next year, she plans to turn her screened porch into a dedicated studio, where she hopes to also teach.
To make each wall or window hanging, she uses small pieces of glass she has cut from sheets.
"If I need to do a circle, I'll draw that out, but otherwise I kind of lay out the design as I go. I can move things around while the glue is wet. When it's dry, I go back and grout to fill in the empty space. That really makes the color pop."
Professional validation has come with acceptance into juried art shows, including Festival in the Park in Charlotte, which she first entered in 2006, Art in the Park in Blowing Rock, where she'll appear again this summer and fall, and Lazy Daze.
"I'm really drawn to outdoor festivals," she said. "I get to travel, and I've met so many wonderful artists doing them. It's also nice because you get a lot of feedback on your work. And I like seeing who's taking a piece home."
