A n n a   M i k e š o v á, D i S

Anna Mikešová the founder and creator of Atelier Minart is passionate about glass jewlery makeing for many years. 

ABOUT 

Anna is a Nový Bor City-based designer whose love of jewelry and glass started when she was a little girl. After graduating from olderest glass school in Europe (where she studied glass painting), and with the encouragement of her family, Anna finished the Higher proffesional school of glass makeing in Nový Bor, where she received an degree in glass design.

There she honed her design and painting skills studying under professor and glass artist ak. mal. Stanislav Honzík. Anna then formally started her glass painting career in a program artits in residence by Sklářský atelier at Kamenický Šenov, working directly with a owner Mr. Petr Rath from Vienna. Eventually after two years she becoming a free lance artist.

Shortly She had an expirience with work as a graphic desingn in an advertisment studio which gave her a basic skills in photoshop and some others. It helped a lot with a full time job in a retail beads store. Here, she oversaw shop and made more than 10K photos on e-shop products over 7 years, including metal components, glass beads,  beading material, tools and more in a cooperation with www.beadperlen.com

While that was a success, she put it aside to focus on her own mark in the jewelry industry with her namesake line ATELIER MINART in 2013. She runes an every summer seasons of beading workshops at Ajeto glass Tavern an close by Lindava Glasswork.

Haveing a family of two sons and a husbant make her spens more time at her home studio at Pihel near Nový Bor. Today, Anna Mikešová spends her days on vilage, intimately working with a small group of dealers and customers to create every single piece in her themes.

Her choice to keep production in North Bohemia is an homage to the past craftsmen and traditional production of Czech glass and Czech glass beads.

I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I started to make my own glass jewelry durring school and at my 16 and I start solding out at the Glass museum.

She started from a Jablonec nad Nisou at jewelry fair, solding only few artistic glass jewelry with wire at that time. Then she continued to from a tiny collections of beaded necklaces, hand wraped into wire by useing the technique so callled Coiling gizmo to their final jewelry look. Then came bracelets and earrings to begin the process of becoming a lifestyle accessory brand.

I am taking little steps, she says. 

NEVER MASS PRODUCED

From the very beginning, the vision was simple - design and make by hand - whenever jewelry that I love to wear or glass objects.  All you can see is hand touched.  It is important that I never become contrived and manufactured. Atelier Minart the glass jewelry brand based in Nový Bor is certified by a regional label Lužické hory a Máchův kraj. Aim is minewhile to be environmentally friendly within workhop on a daily basis.

Welcome to the landscape, where the history of ancient crafts breathes on you in harmony with the rhythms of the local Lusatian mountain nature and a time long gone, full of wooden cottages and domestic glass workshops.

If you are an inquisitive person and want to learn something new, we have prepared something for you here.

Do you like to try new things, so-called on your own skin? So here you can!

Welcome to the landscape under the Key and come and see more...The glassmaking tradition is inextricably linked with this region. 

My mission is to dedicate myself to preserving the craft.

It is not only glass techniques, such as glass grinding or sandblasting, glass painting, stained glass, mosaic and fusing. The creative process develops the inner world and teaches us humility, respect for craft and patience in life.

We start from simple tasks, such as putting together individual colors in the form of a simple composition of earrings, to more complex patterns and techniques of threading and kettling.

I would like to highlight above all the therapeutic benefit of such behavior. The great thing is that you can try it under the guidance of experts right at the place where all the tools and material are.

Be creative! Everything is a creative process that you manage yourself and in which you learn to listen to your guidance.

You can design and combine, change and create a work of art at your own pace in the environment of the Glass Workshop, where time runs as you need it to in order to be satisfied with your creation. You will appreciate this when you return back to the bustling city.

I revive traditional glassmaking technologies and help preserve them. I give children the opportunity to learn how to handle them. 

Creating is a game and learning is also playful, that is one of the ideas of the project called Glass workshops.

Just like the old masters from the past, I also follow in my workshop. Winter is a time of reflection and preparation for summer. I  create in peace, at our own pace, creating proposals for new collections based on existing patterns. Which are handmade jewelry, small souvenirs and beaded jewelry. 

These products can also be purchased on the e-shop

ARTIST´S STATEMENT

I have an abundance of wild energy then it is usual in the place where I was born. I grew up in a small town when shops where empty, buildings where abandoned and grey. The people who were locked inside these buildings seem to look half dead to me, and without a hope. When producing my work I like to use my hands. I make the space that surrounds me a better place for living. I try to please my parents' dreams about being worthy and to prove achievements they never could, because of the circumstances of a socialist society. 

I call this space my atelier.

This gives me a sense of contradictory emotions. Sadness connected to sorrow and exaltation coming out of fed-up ness. I do not take it ideal for healthy growth or benefiting my life or so… I understand this attitude as a journey through life, from the way in which I work things out, and what I am able to achieve. I am so madly passionate about being the prime of my life. When creating I forget about the outside world and hunger and concentrate on excellence and joy. I feel almighty, independent and full of expressing energy.

I like to mix up my colors slowly into mild shades and paint any blank or white space in front of me. My favorites are wall and canvas. Canvas is a classical standard, practical, understandable and a conservative material. I like to use the brush because it is perfect to hold in the hands. Photographs also very important to me because they bring up old memories and feelings about the past. The method I use to mix up different colors and styles opens up a passionate attitude for life and new points of view and interest. World full of colors, freedom, frankness are the words I use to express the world I never grew up in. I feel independence, wild abandon and courage in the way of expressing myself.

When my creation or performance is done I am satisfied with well-being.

Marked lines, joyful colors, graphic painting, template motives and simplifying, colorful contrast of shades and light these are the repeating patterns of my art. I use combinations of different styles overriding interest in pop art. My favorite's colors are yellow, turquoise and magenta. I like to explore new principles and mix them. Yellow is childlike toxic, resolutely crazy while turquoise is technical and inspires me by modern science and technology. Magenta is mystical elegant and deeply wise. I am conscious that by mixing these three colors I am competitive to achieve any kind of tone.

Obsession:

Borderline between passion and obsession is given by intensive emotions experienced in my reality. It is predominance of sentimental form of ideology of perfection, integrity and flawlessness. I map over addiction in relationships native to unhealthy background of the totalitarian regime of former Czechoslovakia. Opposite is alternative choice of self-reliance and independence. I hold an illusion of romance about perfect freedom life where difference is celebrated for individuality and diversity is not suppressed. Fear and feeling of verification check from outward power are still possessed.

Combination:

I like to compare and combine new ways of thinking and how they can live next to each other. It is a process of unification, tuning, ordering, and sorting subordination accords. I seek for simple order every day. I am creating my life and being myself while starting a new project. I am always little nervous about it and try to calm my mind. When the work is done I feel rested and fulfillment. I want to continue in creating a healthy and safe space for healing.

Foremost for the people who are interested in my work, I like to share with them the story of my life.