A world in pieces: the ceramic mosaics of Cleo Mussi The slogan on Cleo Mussi's website hints at her destructive tendencies: without breakers, there are no makers; without makers, there are no breakers. It sounds Nietzschean, I venture, speaking over the telephone to her at her studio in Stroud, but she cuts across me with a laugh. I'm not that deep! It's a Dutch saying that I love because I'm so clumsy. If only clumsiness always manifested itself in such whimsical ways. Mussi, 47, creates mosaic sculptures and two-dimensional pieces - of flowers, animals, hands, toys, robots - constructed from hundreds of pieces of carefully clipped crockery. Wedgwood florals adorn cheeks; mug handles form ears; Staffordshire dogs peek out from bouquets; thumbs are factory-stamped. Mussi studied textiles at Goldsmith's College in London in the 1980s, but ceramics were always an interest. "I spent a lot of holidays in Spain as a child, and ceramics are very much part of the Spanish culture," she says. Those glazes interested me even when I was tiny. After experimenting with recycled fabrics at college, she moved on to tiles. I'm a maker, essentially; I like making things with my hands. Mussi's 2009 touring show Pharma's Market, which took genetic engineering as its theme, was at once nostalgic and modern. Platters decorated with ceramic vegetables and letters spelling out best in show were hung next to life-size murals of scientists brandishing test tubes. Some people found the work humorous - one man realised the breasts of a mosaic woman were the dinner plates he had eaten off as a child - but others found it disturbing. "[My work] appears to be pretty and attractive and banal, but there's something else going on underneath the surface," Mussi says. When you look a bit deeper you see that it's slightly sinister and actually quite black. Phrenological Head, £565; Posy, £165 Mussi's current exhibition, 50:50, at the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth (until September), is characteristically intriguing. The show is the result of a trip to Japan with her husband, the textile artist Matthew Harris, in 2010. Mosaic mutants with teacup bodies and parrot heads, inspired by the Japanese mania for mobile phone charms, sit alongside more traditional wall-mounts of kokeshi dolls and shrines. Japan is such a modern culture, and yet it's got such an ancient culture within it. I loved all the mass-produced imagery," she says. Mussi's next big solo show will be in Edinburgh in October, with a working title of Mussi's Magic Toy Shop. "It will be a culmination of my interests in genetically modified ideas, kawaii [the cuteness with which modern Japanese culture is obsessed], Japan's production lines, robots and rabbits," she says. She's also illustrating and writing a children's picture book, and has a steady stream of private commissions. "A lot of people have inherited rather strange ornaments and don't particularly like them," she says. I make them into a modern piece of work - then they've still got those family memories, but they have given them a new lease of life. mussimosaics.co.uk