Spotlight Artist: Kenneth Blaine

Kenneth Blaine is obsessed with ocean life, which he’s sure comes with living near the coast and having a love of outdoors. A serious sea glass collector for the past 25 years, Blaine is now based in Humacao, Puerto Rico, where the glass on his Playa Capitolio beach is Old San Juan is plentiful.

While he’d been artistic from a young age, he only started making his sea glass mosaics in 2015, but his artwork was exactly what sea glass lovers were looking for—a unique way to feature sea glass as art. “I immediately recognized how pieces could be arranged to fit together creating objects and flowing lines.” Blaine carefully and tediously fits together individual pieces of sea glass and mosaic tiles onto various surfaces, such as serving tray, frames, cement and wood. He notes that customers love the feel of his work. “Since mosaics are one of the art forms that are actually meant to be touched, the smooth finish of my sea glass mosaics is always well received.”

A man of many talents, Blaine is also a classically trained pianist, and recently, a film score composer. He sees similarities in both forms of art: “Music composition has so many parallels with creating mosaics. As notes and chord progressions are arranged to create beautiful melodies, tesserae (pieces used in mosaics) are also arranged in a way to create patterns and lines that makes a statement, soliciting emotions from the viewer.”

Blaine currently shows and sells his sea glass mosaics at art festivals in southeast Puerto Rico, and on line. He would like to “push the limits and boundaries of what I am capable of creating,” and is looking forward to hosting a solo art exhibition and hopes soon to become a member of the Society of American Mosaic Artists (SAMA).

Find Kenneth Blaine’s sea glass mosaics at etsy.com/shop/KennethBlaineStudio

This article appeared in the Glassing Magazine September/October 2018 issue.