20220630-HOWARDMAGAZINE - Flipbook - Page 47
Scarbath used watch parts, jewelry and various items to make steampunk and embellished crabs.
Lisa Scarbath, mosaics
Lisa Scarbath, of Ellicott City,
creates mosaics and other
decorative pieces in her studio
at the Howard County Center
for the Arts. Scarbath gets
inspiration from historical
objects and is creating a World
War I nurse’s cape with smalti
for an upcoming exhibit.
She created this pet portrait,
left, with stained glass in her
studio. PHOTOS BY KIM HAIRSTON
She has embraced art since second grade, when she
won a school drawing contest during the Bicentennial.
Her crayon likeness of the Liberty Bell, its crack intact
and with a rainbow overhead, won a $100 savings bond.
That bell, and what it represents, has long reflected Lisa
Scarbath’s passion for her craft.
“Art has been so freeing for me,” said Scarbath, 53, a
mosaics devotee from Ellicott City. “It’s about having a
vision, then taking solid objects and following their ‘flow’
as where they should go [on the art piece], to create the
image that I had in my head.”
From those pensive jigsaw puzzles, Scarbath shapes
works of different textures from the flotsam and jetsam
of everyday life: a shard of colored glass or a pebble that
caught her eye. A beachcomber, she’ll scour the shoreline
for shells, stones and other debris that may fit her needs.
“At Ocean City, my husband and I will go out on the
beach to exercise and I’ll wind up stopping every three
feet to pick up something,” she said. “Our pockets are
always bulging.”
Her current handiwork? A line of steampunk crabs,
7-inch ornamental crustaceans made of old watch parts,
beads and castoff jewelry. Each crab is unique sells for
$75.
“There’s something super-satisfying about [cobbling]
stuff with different textures in place,” said Scarbath.
“With mosaics, I’ve learned that [the result] doesn’t
have to be perfect to be good. It’s personal; it tells a
story. You’re creating an object that makes you happy.
It doesn’t have to make others happy.”
That touchy-feely concept has stood her well. A
resident artist at the Howard County Center for the Arts,
she created a popular mosaic this year to mark the town’s
250th anniversary. The six-panel work, entitled “Pieces
of History: EC250 Mosaic,” measures nearly 8-feetby-5-feet and recreates Main Street and some iconic
buildings, using — among other things — nearly 80
keepsakes offered up by residents who’d held them dear.
There’s an old piece of pipe from a local church organ;
a chunk of the castle from The Enchanted Forest, a
onetime storybook park for kids; and shards of china
fished from the Patapsco River after one of the town’s
floods.
If objects are too large for her work, Scarbath reaches
for the hammer.
“If it’s a beautiful piece of china, I’ll take pause — but
I still go for it,” she said. An exception is the metal B&O
railroad spike she received for the project. The mosaic
will be displayed in Ellicott City storefronts until sold
for $9,000.
“I’m still a newbie at this; I’ve got so much to learn,”
said Scarbath, a Baltimore native, former attorney and
onetime law professor at Stevenson University. “I’m on
career No. 3, but it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.”
howardmagazine.com | SUMMER 2022 | 47