She turns ugly into beauty

Mary Pritzl is a rescuer.

Her small house is home to an assortment of reptiles. Other pets include a large tortoise, two parrots and a dog. Each was rescued, either sick or injured, and brought to live with her. Pritzl, a trained veterinary technician and medical rescue technician, takes them in.

But she doesn’t just work with animals. With Mary, inanimate items get a second chance as well.

Pritzl is a mosaic artist. Using bits of broken tile, stones and other found objects, she creates elaborate murals and art pieces on things that would otherwise be discarded or trashed.

Pritzl’s first project was making mosaic-covered brick pavers as Christmas gifts. “I didn’t do such a great job,” she said.

Next she went to work on the fireplace in her living room. Using tile cut and broken into fragments, Pritzl covered the entire façade. She estimates she spent at least 100 hours on the fireplace project.

“I just put everything right on top of the brick and it took forever,” Pritzl said. “Now I would use ‘wonder board’ and apply the mosaic to that.”

Next, she moved outdoors and added a mosaic to the front steps, including her address in tiny yellow tiles.

Using found objects – something she considers her specialty – Pritzl began Dumpster diving for more items to decorate. A chair was encased in concrete and covered with bits of tile, glass and stones. Decorated bird baths, a rusted milk-can and cement stepping-stones for the garden followed.

One of her favorite projects is to add a mosaic to the front of recycled kitchen cabinet doors. “I pick them up for almost nothing and they make a great work surface,” she said.

Now, Pritzl teaches classes twice a year on creating mosaics using found objects at the Habitat-Spokane Builder’s Surplus Store on Trent. “Most of what I purchase to create my mosaics comes from the Habitat store,” she said. “It’s great source for materials.”

One of Pritzl’s favorite pieces is on display at Spokane Coin Exchange on Washington, downtown.

Owner Steve Baldwin said it attracts a lot of attention. Pritzl had purchased an easel from Baldwin on which to display the large mosaic.

Although Pritzl had asked permission to keep the piece in his store overnight, until it could be delivered to a business across the street, when he came to work the next morning he decided it should stay.

“So I offered to buy it and then I had to buy my easel back,” Baldwin said. “But in the year I’ve had it, I’ve probably had a hundred or more people comment on it.”

Pritzl tries to keep her prices low, but she says the time involved in each creation adds up.

“In the beginning, I had hoped to use the mosaics to fund my medical rescue business,” she said. “But people don’t always want to pay what a piece is worth.”

In addition to conducting animal rescues, Pritzl owns a wholesale jewelry business. She also sells low-level laser units which she believes speed healing and improve the quality of life for animals and humans. “LLLT, or low level laser therapy has been in the United Kingdom for years,” Pritzl said. “I use it on myself and on the animals I treat.”

Because her professional life is often stressful, she finds creative release in working with tile. “It’s very therapeutic,” she said. “I get to break things and then turn them into something pleasing to the eye.”

With her trash-to-treasure philosophy, nothing escapes a trial. She mosaics coffee and tuna cans, birdhouses and even plastic serving bowls from the Dollar Store. One sits on a pedestal, serving as a bird bath, in her front yard.

She has recently completed a mosaic “faux” grape arbor on the exterior wall of her house and she’d like a chance to do more large-scale installations. “I think it would be fun to work on a garage wall or something like that,” she said. Although the idea of working on a large canvas is appealing, to Pritzl, the fun is in the details.

“It is very satisfying when the piece is done and the wet, gooey, grout is wiped away to reveal the splendor beneath,” she said. “Then life is good.”