From City solicitor to eco-artivist

Ex-City solicitor, I always practiced art as a way of life. Whether selling my drawings on the street or collecting the wax from the candle trays in churches to re-melt and model as a child, drawing huge drapes with medieval life scenes for a medieval fair by using material and techniques of the time as a teenager or frantically modelling clay as a solicitor, art has always played an essential role in my life. For some perverse misconception, I always thought that art came too easy and was too much fun to be a job. So, I chose what suited me the least instead, to make up for ’lacks’ in my character, and I became a City solicitor.

After the children and a striking visit to the mosaics in Aquileia I finally gave in to my nature and made the leap to happiness, graduating with distinction in Mosaic and Fine Arts at the London School of Mosaic in 2019, where I also lectured the Mosaic Fabrication module in 2021/22. And now I simply cannot stop hoarding and showing off my ’Trashure’.

I exhibited in over 100 venues, was published in over 60 articles and textbooks, and won over 2 dozen awards - at international level. 

I am the founder of the Payment in Kind(ness)© initiative, whereby I accept eco-friendly actions as payment toward my artwork, and of ArtforTrash©, whereby I use the clients’ own waste to create artwork for residential, institutional and corporate settings internationally.

My eco-activism spontaneously came out progressively from my all-encompassing, eco-conscious upbringing, whereby - as an example - we would be guerrilla-planting our home-grown plants and trees at weekends.

I now run pro bono art projects with schools, individuals and organisations on eco-awareness and sustainability. To name a few, I collaborated with Living Streets, Salon Sustainability, Fernando Montaño, The Camden Clean Air Initiative on Earthfest 2024 and a few primary and secondary schools in London. My longest collaboration (March 2018 - April 2019) was A Breath of Fresh Air with the London International Gallery of Children’s Art (LIGCA), which involved 5 schools in London and Delhi and culminated in an exhibition at the Nehru Centre in Mayfair - along with a few workshops with primary and secondary school students (on links between nature and pollution through Sanskrit philosophy and chanting). 

During the 2020 Lockdown I also delved into the realm of performance art, embracing the Getty challenge in recreating artworks with make-do props. They proved to be really popular, and positively helped to raise the spirits of our quarantine souls worldwide. Four of my recreations were also published by the Getty Museum in their Off the Walls book (the sales of which sponsored artists in need).

I am called to give inspirational talks and presentations to professional, corporate and institutional environments. You can find an example below, as a guest speaker of the British Association for Modern Mosaic (BAMM) at their yearly Forum in 2023, entitled Pushing the Boundaries. And indeed this is what I do, being unique both in the world of mosaic and in the fine arts, never quite fitting in any box and pioneering innovative initiatives and techniques.

I an currently collaborating with the Institute of Marine Sciences in Venice on Project Maelstrom, whereby I will create a permanent installation in loco for 2 weeks during the Venice Boat Show 2024, by using both the waste recovered from the sea through their initiatives and that from their labs.

Testimonials

  • Francesca has been our Lecturer in Mosaic Practice in the academic year 2021-22 on our Diploma in Mosaic Studies. She has taught our largest ever cohort in which was the first time for her teaching her module Mosaic Fabrication. She has very successfully updated our syllabus and developed a systematic structure for mosaic projects on the module. Her teaching is focused, motivational and thorough. She is very skilled at working with people from different skill levels and bringing them all together, while offering critical feedback and encouragement to each individual student. Francesca’s work is highly professional and she adapts easily to both online and offline systems of working. She brings with her an incredibly positive attitude to problem solving and working in a creative space with a diversity of users. The students loved her class and our team are privileged to work with her, as she gives 120% .

    Dr Silvie Jacobi, Director at the London School of Mosaic

  • Francesca was my tutor at the London School of Mosaic in 2021-22. She taught the Making of Mosaics but her teaching went far beyond the practical limitations of the course. I learnt so much from Francesca: thanks to her dynamic and fun approach, her ability to clearly show and explain using different methods and teaching supports, I have made tremendous progress in my mosaic practice. Francesca is a permanently smiling and enthusiastic professional who reuses a wide range of media to create vibrant and colourful mosaics, recycled out of collected rubbish. Her innovative approach encourages her students to equally look outside the box for imaginative and personal art creation.

    Marie-Paule Pierson, LSoM 21/22 diploma student

  • I was so chuffed when Francesca asked me to collaborate with her on The Flow of Life. We already co-managed a large mosaic as well as sharing the tutorial role at the London School of Mosaic. She comes with a large baggage of professional skills, broad knowledge and fast thinking. Great both as leader and team player and always ready to go the extra mile to get the best result. Francesca is gifted with a great degree of intuition to create pieces in harmony with the space they are devised for. Her art is meaningful, witty and truly contemporary.

    Giulia Vogrig, Lecturer in Mosaic Practice at the London School of Mosaic

  • I absolutely loved being taught by Francesca at LSoM in 2021-2022. Her passion and enthusiasm for mosaics is infectious and she's a really well informed and patient teacher - no question was ever too much. I couldn't recommend her enough.

    Amy Exton, LSoM 21/22 diploma student

  • Francesca is an exceptional student and practitioner of mosaic, combining great skill with a hugely innovative approach. We need people like Francesca to help mosaic break out of its millennia of tradition and find a new distinctive voice. She is also excellent at working in a multi-cultural team and brings her love of life to the work place.

    David Tootill, Founder of the London School of Mosaic

  • Francesca is a very warm, vibrant and enthusiastic teacher. She makes sure all the important points are covered and skills are learnt and executed to a high standards but with plenty of collaboration and fun along the way. All ideas and questions are welcome and I’m especially impressed with Francesca’s commitment to being eco-conscious in everything she does, and how that is as catching as her laugh! I would absolutely love to be taught by Francesca again one day. She is a multicoloured shooting star with eco bells on! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

    Bridget Kelly, LSoM 21/22 diploma student

  • There are some people you instantly taking a liking to, sometimes even before meeting them in person, and this was precisely what happened to me with Francesca, when we began communicating via email regarding the art exhibition we were curating together as part of the Chelsea Fringe Art Festival at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. Her generous, helpful and incredibly enthusiastic attitude were palpable even through her writing, and meeting her in person only accentuated my immediate appreciation of her. A real, authentic person to the core, she is almost ridiculously charismatic and warm-hearted. Her profound concern and activism for the environment made me question how much more I could personally do to help in that way, and I found myself making a number of changes in my life to use as little plastic as possible and encourage others to do the same. Furthermore, Francesca’s boundless creativity has always left me fascinated. I absolutely love her work and have visited other exhibitions of hers since we worked together. The wonders she can create with, literally, rubbish are both mind-boggling and an indication of how a creative mind can take the first guiding steps towards building a better future. I genuinely hope that I will have the opportunity to work with Francesca again, as it was pure joy to collaborate with her and I loved everything about her hard-working, cooperative and reliable attitude, but most of all, her sincere cheerfulness and the fact she is an authentic person, which to me, is an invaluable trait.

    Lola Awada, Multidisciplinary Artist and Writer

  • I have known Francesca for approximately 8 years through our mutual love of mixed media and mosaics. Throughout this time, she has been at the forefront of pushing boundaries with her experimental work in rubbish recycling for art. Through the British Association for Modern Mosaic, I have had the pleasure of engaging Francesca on several occasions to run workshops and to speak at our annual mosaic forum event. She brings a passion and enthusiasm for her chosen subject that is both tangible and infectious and she has inspired mosaic artists around the country and further afield to push their own boundaries, to try new methods and materials and to think outside the box in the name of eco-activism. On all occasions, I have found Francesca to be a bright bubble of energy who brings positivity and enthusiasm to all that she does. I would highly recommend her for any role that she is inspired to take up.

    Tamara Froud, President at British Association of Modern Mosaic (BAMM), Director at Mosaic Art Ltd., President at British Association of Modern Mosaic (BAMM)

  • Francesca Busca possiede una grande talento espressivo che le consente non solo di fare arte, ma anche di instaurare un vero e proprio rapporto con il pubblico, rendendolo partecipe delle sue opere affrontando spesso tematiche sociali che riguardano tutti. Il suo gesto creativo è modulato con grande efficacia segnica, e da esso è facile capire che tipo di ricerca segnica abbia condotto l'artista e decifrarne di conseguenza, il linguaggio simbolico ed articolato. Un'artista versatile che sfrutta il proprio talento come spunto di riflessione per l'astante, affermando una forte contemporaneità di stile. --- Francesca Busca possesses a great expressive talent which allows her not only to make art, but also to establish a real relationship with the public, making them participate in her works, often addressing social issues that concern everyone. Her creative gesture is modulated with great sign effectiveness, and from it it is easy to understand what type of sign research the artist conducted and consequently decipher the symbolic and articulated language. A versatile artist who uses her talent as food for thought for the bystander, affirming a strong contemporaneity of style.

    Paolo Levi, Writer, Journalist, Art Critic

  • The chocolate bar wrapper, the disposable coffee cup, the furniture that we replace because it looks a little tatty. We live in an age where most ofus are producing waste at a monumental level. Francesca Busca is not most of us and her commitment to live a sustainable life extends to her art where she repurposes hairdresser's foils, papers and magazines, cork, leftover paint, bottle caps and crisp and popcorn packers to create art that promotes sustainability. She will work with clients to create art from their own waste and will even accept eco-friendly actions in lieu of payment for her art. Creating the words 'love' and 'live' out of rubbish it's both a critique of how wasteful we can all be, but also a beacon of optimism as it's now well known that we're facing an ecological crisis and Francesca remains optimistic that we can find a way to address the climate crisis. Hermessage is clear - make art, not waste.

    Tabish Khan, Critic, Writer, Speaker

Exhibitions

(selection)

On permanent exhibition at Halcyon Interiors, 120 Wigmore Street, London

2024

2 weeks’ residency at the Institute of Marine Sciences, Venice, 2th May - 3rd June

Waste to Create 3, EcoAware Gallery

EarthFest 2024, King’s Cross, London: making the Earthfest sign (10m), giving an inspirational talk to secondary schools on What a Load of Rubbish! on School Day Thursday, taking part to a panel talk hosted by Chloe Tuck from Enviral with Joel Tasche (CleanHub) and Tessa Clarke (Olio) on B2B Friday, and making ther Earthfest logo on site with the help of colleagues Bridget Kelly and Marie-Paule Pierson during the open weekend

EmpowerHER, CasildArt Gallery, London

Ephemeral Elegance: Women in Artistic Reflection, Cista Arts

ArtGeminiPrize, The London Lighthouse Gallery, London

Sustainability in Practice, Meta Space Gallery, LJMU, Liverpool

2022

Our Earth, Art fron Heart, Espacio Gallery, London

Flux 2022, C1, 1 Cripps Yard, SE10 0BQ, London

The Environment, The Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield

LICC 2021 official selection with the Art for Trash project with Adobe: Our Waste

Old Red TV project: showing Adobe's Our Waste and Lockdown Arties videos in a collaborative anti-capitalist / surrealist TV station spotlighting up and coming video artists of all genres, The Old Red Bus Station, Leeds UK

2021

The Glass Cathedral, ex chiesa di Santa Chiara, Fond. Manin, 1, Murano, Venice, Italy, 2016-21

2020

Art and Sustainability in Dialogue, Staiy Atelier

2019

A Quiet Place, Annex Gallery

London School of Mosaic, London

CURATOR of All That Matter, BAMM, Redwing Gallery, Penzance

Positive Emotions, Kunsthuis Gallery, Mill Green Farm, Crayke

A Breath of Fresh Air, Nehru Centre, London

We Grow into the Forest, The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, London

2018

La Settima Arte Riflessa, Jardines de la Buhaira, Seville, Spain

I am a Woman and this is my Legacy Laura I. Gallery, London

CURATOR of Open Ended, BAMM Exhibition, London School of Mosaic, London

Little Things (Re-Think, Re-Use, Re-Purpose), SOLO, Harrods Estates, London. CENSORED as found too controversial

FLUX , Chelsea College of Art, London

OureARTh, Kunsthuis Gallery, Mill Green Farm, Crayke

Vibrant exhibition, the Old Biscuit Factory, London

Threads, The Artists' Pool, Espacio Gallery, London

BowWow Haus London: St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London.  Profits to go to Blue Cross

Fe/Male  at Air Gallery, Altrincham

LVA Gallery, Sheraton Hotel, Heathrow, London

United International Art Show, Gologorski Gallery, Krakow, Poland

2017

Codes Of Faith 2017, Laura I. Gallery, Ice House Court, London

Find Me!, Vernice Contemporanea, Biennale Off. 57. Biennale d'Arte di Venezia, Venice

Nasty Women UK , Stour Space, London. Raising funds for End Violence Against Women

Canary Wharf New District Residency, London

Now That's What I Call Art, Laura I. Art Gallery, Ice House Court, London

First International Award  "Arte Milano", Teatro Dal Verme, Milano

Threads, Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh

From Rome to London, Southbank Mosaics, St Lawrence Jewry Guildhall Yard, London

FLUX,  The Chelsea College of Art, London. Featured as Artist In the Spotlight

SOLO exhibition on Light, Space & Time Online Art Gallery

I'm In Heaven , Heaven Art Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona

Ode to Nature: 4 artists’ exhibition, Chelsea Fringe, Oxford House Gallery, London,. My project: Nature in its Nemesis

We Need to Talk about Clothes, Thread Counts, Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham

Artexpo 2017, Pier 94, NYC

Biennale Peschiera del Garda, Caserma dell'Artiglieria, Peschiera del Garda, Italy

Threads, The Artists' Pool, Espacio Gallery, London

MeArt - Biennale Internazionale del Mediterraneo, Palermo, Italy

Artwork selected as Header Image for Curator Space ("Materia 1, 2, 3")

International Award "Galileo Galilei", Pisa, Italy

2016

Contemporary Venice, It’s LIQUID International Art Show, Palazzo Flangini, Venice, Italy

Spectrum 2016 with World Wide Art/Artavita, Booth 807, Miami, Florida

Oxygen - Fragmented Cities+Identities, Jorge Jurado Art Studio, Bogota', Colombia

Art San Diego 2016, Balboa Park Activity Center, San Diego, California

Leave/Remain, Bank Street Arts, Sheffield

Future Landscapes,  Ca' Zanardi, Venice, Italy

Frida Kahlo – Lust for Life, Menier Gallery,  London

Awards

(selection)

2021

Artist of the month, Art from Heart

2020

Artist of the Future award, Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Excellence award, Creative Quarterly 59

2 x Saatchi Gallery favourites at the Recycling SaatchiTakeover competition

2019

Honorable Mention, London International Creative Competition 2019: Art for Trash with Bluefield Partners

2018

Highly commended award, Fe/Male Exhibition, Air Gallery, Altrincham

1st place, All Photography and Digital Media Exhibition, Contemporary Art Gallery Online

2017

1st place, Eclectic Art, Bauhaus Prairie Art Gallery

Uniqueness of Concept and Originality Award, Still Point IX, Still Point Art Gallery

Contest Excellence Award, Circle Quarterly

3rd place, I'm In Heaven, Heaven Art Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ

1st place, Abstract Art, 3D Category, Light, Space and Time Gallery

2016

Overall winner, Spotlight Solo Art Contest, International Gallery of the Arts

Previous

Statement
Next

Portfolio