Comments on: Moasics: they aren't just for Roman bath houses anymore!

Moasics: they aren't just for Roman bath houses anymore!

orange swan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:27:46 -0800

Uh oh, you smashed a dish while you were washing up. But you don't get upset, because you know what to do with the pieces. Being both cultured and crafty, you not only know about the long and illustrious history of mosaic art but also that you can make mosaics from china and ceramic shards as well as pebbles, beads (new or removed from old jewelery), shells, marbles, or even lego or Scrabble tiles. So you take those pieces of your broken plate (and others that klutzy you has broken in the past) and, following some basic instructions, make numbers for your house, a fire place surround, a birdbath, a flower pot, a table or two or four, a tray, picture or mirror frames, a wall mural/homage to Hitchcock, or even a floor. By now you're wishing you had a spare basilica or Roman villa so you could really go nuts. And, besides planning on picking up some thrift shop china, you're eyeing that 48-piece reindeer-and-elves Christmas dinnerware set your mother-in-law gave you a few years back and thinking it's really too bad you're so clumsy and likely to break it in the very near future.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:40:02 -0800

Wow... that's really, really cool stuff. BTW, the Roman Villa link isn't working 9at least for me) where was that supposed to go?

By: Combustible Edison Lighthouse

Combustible Edison Lighthouse — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:43:24 -0800

108 Wyckoff St in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:45:37 -0800

you know what i would love to see in mosaic? animation!

By: Combustible Edison Lighthouse

Combustible Edison Lighthouse — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:52:21 -0800

And if you're in the south of England, the Roman Villa at Bignor is worth a visit. Part of the charm is that it just looks like a not-very-interesting farmer's field when you drive by it.

By: The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:52:43 -0800

you know what i would love to see in mosaic? animation! Two tabs of LSD should take care of that for you!

By: -harlequin-

-harlequin- — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:57:30 -0800

Mosaics didn't interest me much until I saw the one in the movie Alexander - instead of cobblestones in an outdoor meeting area, there was a map of the world, a stone mosaic that was the ground, impervious to elements, and a useful map (and an aide when explaining things to the movie's audience). Since then, pristine cobblestones or paving now looks like wasted opportunity :-)

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:59:01 -0800

Thanks. Now I feel like a barbarian using these broken plates as improvised weapons.

By: Eekacat

Eekacat — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:45:55 -0800

Man, I'd love that Psycho one in my shower. Awesome!

By: Tube

Tube — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:10:41 -0800

Here is a Flickr set of some sidewalk mosaics I found in Seattle.

By: sonascope

sonascope — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:51:09 -0800

You know, I'd never really thought much about mosaic, except to look at it with a kind of shrug. I'd been doing pickup deranged street theater gigs at the American Visionary Art Museum for four years when they started the first phase of their project to cover all the bare concrete on the facility with a mirror/bottle/ceramic mosaic, and at the time, I really thought it was a step backwards for the place. Forgive me, but I happen to like bare concrete in modern architecture. Of course, after four more years of pickup deranged street theater gigs, when I was in the midst of a flounder-y attempt at being a freelance building contractor to atone for almost twenty years as a high security micrographic tech and media archivist, they asked if I'd be interested in coming on board for the next year-long phase of mosaic construction. I'd consumed my 401k, churned through my savings, and was well on the way to the kind of depression where you keep finding yourself on the floor of your kitchen in your underpants surrounded by empty Cool-Whip containers, so naturally I said "sure!" As construction engineer and number two guy to our lead artist/educator, I spent a year on a diesel lift, mounting rails and cement board panels, helping the artist mark the panels with the overall design, coming up with solutions to technical problems and working out ways to make our final project more long-lived (those media archivist years, with all the boring study of materials archivality, came in handy), and transporting heavy crap from one end of Baltimore to the other. Some 20,000 pounds of finished mosaic panels rode on the top of my Metro that year, which is why my car still rides a little funny. We worked with kids in juvenile detention programs, homeless shelters, drug treatment centers, and they did most of the construction work and a fair amount of the design, within the overall outlines the artist laid out, and it was the kind of experience of watching people's attitudes change through the study of art that really justifies spending money on art. By the end, when we were rushing to beat our deadlines and the end-of-project date on the HUD grant that funded the project, I came down from the diesel lift and spent the last several months doing mosaic work, too, to help out. Funny thing, that. I still love raw concrete with the woodgrain and the formwork tracery visible, but after a year spent working on that mosaic, and reading up on Hundertwasser and Gaudi (Park Guell—holy mother of suwheeet jeez), and taking lots of field trips to Philadelphia to see Isaiah Zagar's works in progress and Lily Yeh's art parks, I have to think I've definitely incorporated the rough logic and lyricism of mosaic into my approach to the world. I'm still at the museum, hired on after the grant ran out as the head of facility tech and maintenance, and I'm still working on mosaic, doing little projects here and there when I can sneak them into the garden or hidden corners around the place, and mosaic becomes an answer to a lot of questions that you wouldn't normally connect with mosaic. When regrading our wildflower garden to improve drainage, and after trying to figure out a way to raise the beds without doing something ugly and unnatural looking, I realized that, rather than hide the low curb walls I'd have to build, I could build them freehand (earthship-style), given them a scratch coat, and mosaic them (with a little help from my friends), and bring a little Gaudi to Baltimore. You get where you can't stop yourself, which is why there's a sad tendency for mosaic to devolve into hippie kitsch, alas, but I'm doing my best to practice restraint. What it really gives you is this amazing sense that there's nothing that can't be salvaged, reused, or repurposed—that everything belongs somewhere, in a context that maybe only you know, and so you mix up a fresh batch of thinset mortar, oil up your glass cutters, and have that great moment of revelation that comes from seeing what's possible. I think I'll start out right here, in this blue-green glass.

By: jammy

jammy — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:57:59 -0800

mosaics rule! thanks for this! be sure to also check out: Beehive Design Collective - Mosaics and here's a Mosaic Touring Bike

By: dawson

dawson — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:04:10 -0800

when there are more favorites than comments you know you have a quality, time-intensive, interesting post...thanks OS.

By: thatbrunette

thatbrunette — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:04:51 -0800

This was a fantastic and fun post. Thanks! And damn that Christmas dinnerware set to hell!

By: Kimothy

Kimothy — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:36:23 -0800

Those Hitchcock murals are great. Some of them are really well done. - Then again, I'm pretty much for anything that glorifies Hitchcock movies. Thanks for that.

By: 3.2.3

3.2.3 — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:16:41 -0800

That basilica link goes to a picture of the cathedral at Monreale, right? Isiaah Zagar's lot is a hoot and a holler. I was visiting Philly and walked by it with a friend. We had no idea who had done it.

By: crataegus

crataegus — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:45:15 -0800

This was awesome. Thank you. Now I have to break things.

By: electrasteph

electrasteph — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:00:03 -0800

Our Bottle cap art car

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:45:17 -0800

millions of people go to the walt disney world magic kingdom. and while they all see "cinderella's castle", very few of them notice the gorgeous mosaics in the archway that tell the story of cinderella. links to a blog entry http://mosaicinfo.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/inside-cinderellas-castle-at-walt-disney-world/ and flickr tags "disney + cinderella + mosaic

By: 912 Greens

912 Greens — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:13:54 -0800

Oh man, I love mosaics. I'm totally gonna go home and break shit. Great post!

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:22:49 -0800

Metafilter: where you keep finding yourself on the floor of your kitchen in your underpants surrounded by empty Cool-Whip containers