Cosmic Circles (i)
Gabriella Polony Mountain's work includes four major themes. The first three themes are clearly recognizable as the Cosmos, Nature, and Figural works with the fourth theme encompassing history, philosophy, and culture. In her life as an artist, Polony Mountain worked with many different medium including mosaics, weavings, sculpture, stained glass, and repousse. Repousse, or repoussage, is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal is shaped by hammering the reverse side of a sheet a metal. On the other side, a low relief design is revealed.
Polony Mountain depicted many scenes of the cosmos and this particular variation includes a central set of concentric ovals which overlap with one another. Smaller circles and ovals are placed strategically across the composition to create a formal unity and balance to the central forms.
This screen is but one example of Polony Mountain's skill with the repousse technique and her ability to create movement within an otherwise static material.