Physician, artist, and writer Pamela Reynolds came to mosaics by chance in 2008 during a summer activity with her daughter and has been captivated by the medium ever since.

On January 21, Reynolds will deliver a composite slideshow presentation to share with members what she has found so alluring about this ancient and vaguely understood art. Dating back to primitive man’s simple arrangements of pebbles into patterns, the art evolved over millennia to decorate wall surfaces in villas and elaborately adorned cathedrals. But as Reynolds will show and tell, contemporary Mosaic Art is no longer Ancient History.

We will see how the techniques gradually developed through history to where we are in the third millennium A.D. The modern mosaicist is about pioneering, revolutionizing, and risk-taking. She will highlight with her slideshow the contemporary mosaic artists from around the globe and their art, what distinguishes them in their craft, and how they are moving the artform out of the shadows of antiquity to the contemporary spaces of today.

A ball of fire in her own life, Reynolds takes her passions as far as she can go. After 32 years in private dentistry, in 2011 she went on active duty with the United States Army, serving in the highly charged area of Kosovo, and from there to Savannah to serve as Dental Officer at Hunter Army Airfield. Recently retiring from the Army, Reynolds’s love of beauty and her natural hand-eye adeptness propelled her not only to fall in love with mosaic art but to soar from novice ability to zenith-level notoriety in record time. Refining her skills by studying with masters at the Mosaic Art School in Venice and Ravenna, Italy as well as the Chicago Mosaic School, she is working on her second graduate degree, an MFA in GSU’s Studio Art Program. Reynolds pushes the mosaic medium with the zeal of a Machiavelli, saying it’s the complexity of the medium that engages her. She enjoys the physicality of the entire process, from cutting various materials to making them whole again to define a composition through texture, reflective light, and color. Her subjects are autobiographical, representing places, people, or memories. Pictured above is her vitally alive Josh, Alli and Mack. “They all reflect my personal sentiments,” Reynolds adds.

Reynolds’ work has been exhibited at the Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas, Texas, The Jepson Center/Telfair Museums, SOFA Exhibition, Chicago, and Georgia Southern University’s Gallery in Statesboro and their Armstrong Campus’ Fine Arts Gallery. She teaches workshops through the Landings Art Association (LAA) and at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center. Reynolds can be reached by email (drpamr@gmail.com).

Artists and art lovers are invited to Reynolds’ presentation, where she will show how she does what she does, with her own expressive energy. You are welcomed to bring a partner or come alone and make new friends. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. (or 6:30 p.m. to munch and mingle) at Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church. There is a $3 guest fee for non-members. For more information about the LAA, visit www.landingsartassociation.com, or email Membership Chair Daryl Nicholson (nicholson.daryl@gmail.com).