What can an artist make from the remains of a shattered world?

For Samson Schames, the answer was mosaic.

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A Jewish artist who fled Nazi Germany for England in 1939, Schames found himself surrounded by another kind of destruction during the London Blitz. From the ruins of bombed buildings, he gathered broken glass, fragments of pottery, nails, and other discarded materials.

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With these remnants, he created extraordinary mosaics that spoke of exile, persecution, loss, and survival.What particularly interests me is that Schames wasn't merely illustrating destruction. He was using the physical remains of destruction to create something new.

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And there is a fascinating second chapter. After moving to New York in 1948, he eventually made glass mosaics with Jewish religious subjects, including Blowing the Shofar and Kindling of the Lights. The Frankfurt museum notes that, for these later works, he deliberately broke the glass himself and reassembled it.

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There is something particularly moving about an artist who takes the very evidence of destruction and gives it a new form. Schames did not conceal the brokenness of his materials. He made it part of what the work had to say.

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