For my virtual exhibit regarding my word “mosaic,” I want to do a variety of pieces that showcase different techniques. One of the pieces I thought of was to make food. Specifically, “cake/cupcake in a jar”. This was inspired by the definition of “mosaic gold,” which is made by the process of baking. I unfortunately do not have access to an oven, so my idea was to get ready-made cakes/cupcakes and put them in a jar, but add gold sprinkles or edible glitter and other components to fulfill the meaning of “mosaic gold”. Besides this, another definition of the word mosaic was “a collective sequence of steps rather than as individual steps”. For this, I got the idea of creating a staircase using plaster. I was going to make individual steps but have them be broken, while the “collective sequence of steps” will be whole and intact. And lastly, I wanted to make use of mosaic’s definition, that “thousands of bits and pieces of seemingly innocuous information can be analyzed and fitted into place to reveal with startling clarity how the unseen whole must operate.” The idea of creating a puzzle, with the use of the laser lab, came to mind, but now that I am thinking about it, a part of me wants to look for an object (not exactly sure what that object should be), and to simply rearrange and deconstruct it like a puzzle.
Having said that, so far, these ideas seem doable and are most likely going to make it to my final exhibition. I plan to add more pieces to this exhibition to showcase the various ways mosaics can be depicted in order to represent its various meanings.
Three other works I plan on including in my catalog are the following:
This is the Casa Batlló, a building that has been converted into a public museum but started as a private home in Barcelona. Its exterior was designed by Antoni Gaudí after being commissioned to do so by the building’s owner. Since its new design, it has become a public attraction for people to admire Gaudí’s work and his technique, “trecandís,” the use of recycled ceramic glass to create mosaics. I plan to include this in my catalog as it shows the use of mosaics in architecture design.
This is a shard of glass containing slices of mosaic cane from the Roman period. This piece of art showcases the different techniques in mosaic-making. I plan to include this in my catalog for that reason, to show that mosaics are not only limited to the idea of piecing broken pieces of material together to create an image.
This is a mosaic panel designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany from 1890-1891. This panel is used as a decorative piece for the entrance of the house at 1 East Sixty-Sixth Street in New York. This in particular is only a prototype of the original. This artwork shows mosaics and how they are used as decoration, which is the idea most people have when it comes to mosaics.
