Mosa Baczewska is a ‘Fractalian” (or Frac-aholic)

CNL2 VIDEO IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

Mosa Baczewska has been a “creative” her entire life. Nothing but a creator. She confides, “People ask what is my purpose in life? To create…beautiful useful art.”

Her range is wide, and she’s always open to making it wider. After decades of crochet, she found fractal art in 2014. And within the last year or two, she has started dipping brushes into acrylics for paintings as small as 2 inches square. She makes hats that feature her art. She makes peace flags. Her tapestry crochet keepsake pouches can be worn as necklaces, and they include quartz crystals. Then there’s her music (singing, guitar, and keyboard).

But her fractal art is the most unusual of her art forms, and CNL2 was eager to learn more.

What is Fractal Art?
A fractal is a geometric shape or curve that is repeated within itself, repeated in ever-smaller scale. Think: two mirrors facing each other, or taking a picture of a TV (in which each TV inside the screen is ever smaller), or a top-down view of a head of Romanesco broccoli.

Fractals aren’t an invention; they’re a discovery. Nature’s geometry. And when Mosa is creating fractals, she thinks of herself as a “mathemagician.”

“It’s one of the most thrilling things for me,” she told CNL2, “to have an understanding of the geometry of the universe. And the geometry of how everything is structured and rises up out of forms that are geometric.”

Since she was a kid, Mosa always loved geometry. She finished her other high school homework first so she could savor the geometry homework. She knows what phrases like “sacred geometry” mean, and “a platonic solid.”

Fractal art deals in mathematical precision and what looks like infinite repetition in sizes progressively smaller until they are gone — like the way the farthest away stars melt into the darkness.

To look into her fractal art is to feel lost in its depth, and so it is art that humbles. It reminds us how tiny, and simultaneously fundamental, we are in the Universe. The feeling of infinity. The edge of the abyss.

She creates her art on a computer, sometimes layering multiple fractals atop each other. She works for hours on each image. “I know it’s done when it jumps off the screen at me.”

Mosa bristles at any mention of the computer as playing an assisting role. It’s a tool, like a Kolinsky Sable paintbrush. And she really bristles at comparing her art to AI art, which involves entering prompts to describe an image and waiting to see an image composited by very smart computers. Fractal art on a laptop is as intellectually demanding and exhausting as any of the visual arts. And it would appear to use another part of the brain, as well as the aesthetic brain. The math brain is working in tandem with the aesthetic brain.

The fractal-making process involves specifying various properties of the initial fractal, layering fractals, modifying colors, changing gradients. Once the art is finished on the computer, she has it printed on a canvas-like fabric and attached to a stretcher, ready for framing.

Mosa’s creations can be seen and purchased every other week at the San Juan Island Farmers Market. And she will be a guest of potter Jeremy Jennings on the Studio Tour June 1st and 2nd.

This CNL2 video is approximately 31-1/2 minutes in duration.