Flower Girls by Jodi Charak
The City of North Charleston’s Cultural Arts Department is pleased to announce that concurrent exhibitions of mosaics by Jodi Charak (Mount Pleasant) and paintings by Abby Short (Charleston) will be on display at Park Circle Gallery from September 30-October 31, 2026. The artists will host a free public reception at the gallery on Friday, October 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.
Broken Into Beauty – Mosaics by Jodi Charak
Broken Into Beauty explores beauty through fragmentation and reconstruction. Using hand-cut stained glass, shattered porcelain, ceramic figurines, and found decorative elements, Jodi Charack creates dimensional mosaics that blur the line between fine art, craft, and storytelling. Each piece celebrates imperfection, memory, and the emotional resonance of reclaimed objects. Much of her inspiration comes from the natural world. The rhythms of leaves, water, flowers, and changing seasons remind her that nothing is static. Through layering, texture, and shifting light, Charak seeks to create pieces that invite viewers to slow down, look closely, and discover something new each time they return. Rather than telling a single story, she hopes her work leaves space for personal interpretation. Each piece becomes a conversation between the glass, the broken objects, and the viewer’s own memories and experiences. “If someone walks away feeling a sense of wonder, reflection, or connection, then my work has fulfilled its purpose,” she explains.
Jodi Charak creates beautiful contemporary mosaics that are unique and distinct. Her colorful mosaics often incorporate faces and flowers, using materials that might otherwise be destined for landfills, such as once-loved ceramic pottery and bone china from famous high-end companies like Capodimonte of Italy, or Coalport, Staffordshire, and Adderley of England. Each of her mosaics uses hundreds of pieces which she painstakingly breaks, cuts, shapes, reshapes, and polishes, all by hand, to fit into perfect position and create stunning finished pieces of art. She sells her work locally in and around Charleston, SC, where she’s lived for the past seven years. Initially from New York, Jodi has always been inspired to create and, over time, has evolved from painting and knitting for herself and her family and friends to reviving old furniture and, most recently, concentrating on creating mosaics. Many of her creations are three-dimensional wall hangings, although she has also created beautiful flowerpots and tabletops. She loves looking for old pottery and china that might inspire a new design or hunting for the perfect piece to help her execute her vision for a new project. You can often find Jodi working in her converted garage workshop with her safety goggles on, drills and cutting tools by her side, and boxes of old pottery in pieces ready for the next design. Learn more about the artist at creationsbyjodilyn.com.
Ladybug Infestation by Abby Short
Death of Ladybug Girl, Birth of a Woman – Paintings by Abby Short
In her exhibit, Death of Ladybug Girl, Birth of a Woman, Abby Short creates a yearning for childhood that is likely fabricated and idealized through the lens of nostalgia, as it is being shed to make way for the present, a more painful but far richer place. Ladybug Girl refers to a children's book character Abby deeply identified with when she was younger through their shared enamourment with ladybugs and make-believe. Death represents growing older and changing the relationship with one’s childhood as it shifts away from being experienced firsthand to having a more fable-like quality through the passage of time.
Abby Short is a narrative painter who aims to tell surrealist stories through the progression of her paintings. She is entering her last year at the University of South Carolina Honors College as an interdisciplinary major, combining fine art, graphic design, and creative writing. She enjoys exploring a variety of art mediums ranging from drawing to sculpture, with a focus on oil painting. She began her "Dailies" project to enhance her creative ideas by making a different daily drawing in a moleskin sketchbook. Another part of her practice is writing short stories and illustrating them, making a hybrid of media where paint can reach where words cannot and vice versa. Learn more about the artist at abbylila.com.
The Park Circle Gallery is located at 4820 Jenkins Avenue in North Charleston. Admission is free, and free street parking is available on Jenkins Avenue in front of the gallery, as well as on the adjacent streets and in parking lots close by. Gallery hours are 10:30 am-5:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, and Noon-4:00 pm on Saturday. For more information about PCG, call 843-637-3565 or email culturalarts@northcharleston.