Bio
Deborah Wait was born and grew up in Southern California. She studied piano from an early age and received a Bachelor's degree in 1977 and a Master's degree in Piano Performance in 1979 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1981 she turned to design and began studying architecture at the University of Colorado in Denver, and in 1985 received a Master of Architecture degree, winning the Graduate Student Award for best final thesis and model.
In the mid-eighties, she worked on the Western Team of the National Park Service, designing housing and Visitor Centers for the Pacific Northwest. In 1992, Deborah and her husband Mark had a beautiful daughter, Mia, and moved the next year to Tennessee.
Five years ago Deborah began teaching herself the craft of mosaics, finding that it combined many of the elements of both music and architecture. She explains, "Mosaics are a way for me to express the order and the quiet dignity that exists in the natural world. I draw on the memories of places I know, like California, Colorado, and the Gulf Coast. By using glass in a new way, I'm able to utilize natural light to create a fuller expression of those memories."
Her mosaics are abstract and impressionistic, with themes deriving from water, light, air, and heat. Instead of using grout, she cuts and re-cuts the pieces of stained glass, gold and marble so that they fit together as tightly as possible. This enables their pure colors to show themselves clearly and vividly. As another artist put it on viewing her "Tides" series, "Yes, that's the way the water on the Gulf looks -- it seems to glow from within."
