Category: Inspiration
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Original Mosaic Designs by School Children
Art teacher Bailey Smith has done something truly amazing. Instead of having her seventh-grade students work on one large mosaic mural to impress parents and administrators, she allowed her students to make their own designs. This gave her students a real art experience that allowed them to be expressive instead of merely being worker bees…
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Azerbaijan Mosaic Artist
Samir İmamverdiyev is the son of the accomplished Azerbaijan mosaicist Musa İmamverdiyev, and he is currently in Iceland and looking for opportunities. I get the impression that Samir would consider opportunities anywhere in North America or the E.U., particularly in Iceland. Samir’s mosaics are impressive architectural murals. His subjects are portraits of medieval poets of…
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Mosaic Garden Art: Fun Group Projects
Artist Donna Stern recently completed a series of abstract mosaics that are exactly what I think of when someone emails asking for fun project ideas for a group day in the studio. Series of Smalls The first thing is that it is a series. More importantly, each element in the series is the same size…
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Harmonious Hues and Abstract Mosaic Art
Artist Zane Pahl’s recently completed mosaic patio table is a solid example of using harmonious hues in an abstract design. I have not written enough about this type of mosaic, especially considering its popularity and its accessibility. Zane’s mosaic is an interesting teaching example because the color scheme is about harmonious hues instead of contrasting…
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The Amazing Stylistic Range of Figurative Mosaic Art
Artist Jennifer Kuhn has an impressive body of work that demonstrates the stylistic range of figurative mosaic artwork. Normally when I need to describe the range of styles of mosaic artwork, I emphasize how found objects can be used as improvised tiles and how that multiplies the number of styles of abstract art that are…
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Floor Inset Mosaic Medallions
Artist Catherine Augustus recently installed some mosaic medallion insets in the floor of St Clare of Assisi Catholic Church on Daniel Island, South Carolina, and you might want to take a look. These mosaics were a volunteer project for the artist and her team of parishioners. They learned on the job and had to dance…
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Masterpiece Miniature Mosaic Series
In centuries past, crafts people worked in guilds, with a guild for each craft: shoemakers, gold smiths, etc. To join a guild, a person had to apprentice themselves to a member of the guild for years and work themselves up from repetitive physical work in the studio to more and more advanced tasks over time.…
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White Tile in Mosaic Artwork
Artist Brad Srebnik‘s latest mosaic street number sign is a good example for a discussion about white tile in mosaic artwork. I also think the color scheme is excellent, and I wanted to say a few things about that. The green and blue and red are all intense but not bright. The color scheme is…
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Case Study: Non-Sanded Grout for Mosaics with Incidental Gap
For better glass mosaic images, tiny incidental gaps are the way to go. Just forget about grouting and fit the glass as tightly as possible. Or better yet, cut the pieces less precisely and use the slight errors in shapes to form an incidental grout gap. I highly recommend this latter mode of working because…
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Mosaic Icon: Moses on Sinai
Here is the first of a series of small mosaic icons I am making on thin concrete outdoor mosaic backers that resemble rough-edged flagstones but are significantly more crack-resistant. I am not sure if this will be the only Biblical subject in the series. The mosaic is ungrouted at this point, but I plan to…
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Mixed-Media Mosaic with Ceramic Relief Sculpture
Artist Aly Winningham of Terra Firma Studios has some great mixed-media mosaic artwork. These wall-relief mosaics are a balanced mix of custom ceramic sculptural elements, found objects, and elements of conventional tesserae. I love mixed-media mosaic, and I love to make it myself, but the problem is that you have to spend time at yard…
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Excellence in Mosaic Art
In my post, “Agonizing over Mosaic Icons,” I discussed artist Sue Hague’s mosaic reproductions of Greek Christian icons, and the troubles she was experiencing due to the grout gap. My advice to Sue was to eliminate the grout gap in her future work because these icons weren’t architectural surfaces exposed to the elements. The grout…