Piece by Piece

Piece by Piece

Mosaic artist recreates St. Albans Bay.

By Renée Stewart-Hester

WHO KNEW THAT RESTROOMS at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) could inspire a stunning kitchen design element.

When adding personal touches to a home, owners can take several paths when it comes to articulating a unique décor story. When Pady Regnier was redesigning her Lake Minnetonka home’s kitchen, she took a more natural approach—especially when it came to the stove’s backsplash.

“We have a smaller beach-type house and not a lot of space for all the art I love,” Regnier says. “I wanted something creative, unique and original art that would convey our love of St. Albans Bay and the community of Greenwood that we live in. It’s a magical place in the best corner of the world. I kind of think of our community like a commune. We share everything around here.”

Here’s where MSP comes into the picture. Regnier is an MSP concession operator (and has other venues in other U.S. airports). MSP restrooms are known worldwide for their cleanliness, openness and style, she notes. “Each of the new restrooms have an artistic theme with beautiful art, mostly mosaics that are just awe inspiring,” Regnier says.

“That is where I got the original idea. I reached out to our [Airport Foundation MSP] arts department to see if I could find one of the artists to entertain this idea of a private home kitchen backsplash,” she says. She connected with artist Stacia Goodman, who has worked in mosaic art for 20 years and is the artist behind two large mosaic murals, which were installed in 2016 in Terminal 2 with the theme: Northern Lights.

Once the planning stage began, Regnier had a vision and a story to tell. “ I run on the trail and cross the St. Albans bridge—it seems 50 times a day, so that is part of our story out here,” she says. “I camp out at twilight on what we call the ‘sunset bench’ on the trail, and we wanted a piece of Excelsior Bay in the story. [Goodman] captured it all.”

The mosaic is made primarily with stained glass, also known as colored glass, according to Goodman. “I purchase glass in large sheets, and then I cut by hand the sheets down into the shapes I want,” she says. “I sprinkled in a few round, handmade green tiles to add dimension and one perfect, little tile heart to place mark [the Regnier home].”

It took about a month and a half or so of presenting Regnier with design ideas and iterations. “Then she and her interior designer [Leah Fasching from Designs! in Deephaven] visited my studio to select specific colors of glass that complemented the color swatches for wall paint, cabinet color, island color, field tile, light

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fixtures, etc.,” Goodman says. “Glass provides a lot more color choices than tile.”

The fabrication took about six weeks to complete, and the installation ran just a few hours—just a splash in time to bring waves of color and light into the heart of a home.

Goodman primarily does large-scale mosaics in public places and participated in a joint gallery show at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts several years ago. She is open to small-scale residential or business projects.

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