Making Mosaic Cool Again

Plus, the first YOU ARE HERE mosaic, finished and installed

Dear Reader,

This winter is going to feel like being forced to wait until 9 AM to come downstairs on December 25th, 1982. That was the year that I knew there was a full model of the Star Wars Death Star, complete with a trash compacter, waiting for me in the living room. This winter, I will know that there are hundreds of You Are Here mosaics being created in studios all over the country.

But I will have to wait. Can you feel my impatience?

In the meantime, I will take all the breadcrumbs I am offered. Today’s breadcrumbs come to us sprinkled by Ann Hunter all the way out in Oregon. She describes her finished and installed mosaic like this;

the warm colors for the hot dry summers of Southwest Oregon and the cool colors for the miles of forests that cover the mountains that surround my valley. I included stone because I am a rock hound!

Home, a You Are Here Mosaic by Ann Hunter

I love this happy welcome message. So self contained inside its industrial gear frame. I can see her working in the Intuitive/Meditative category that I highlight in the online course. It would fit beautifully into The Hot Metal Wall at The Ruins but this mosaic is in exactly the right place, the artist’s home. And that was the title that Ann gave it; Home.

The place to watch these mosaics as they are shared is The Mosaic Atlas, a special section inside the You Are Here course at Mosaic Arts Online. It is reserved especially for students of You Are Here. Thank you to Ann for not minding that I share the first finished YAH with the world. An auspicious start!

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Mosaic is not Cool

I wince as I feel a thousand angry martellinas (that’s a mosaic hammer) making contact with my skull. I feel the rage of mosaicists from Toronto to Tasmania for having the nerve to write out this blasphemy.

But it’s true. I have lived inside its uncoolness for twenty five years. I have the receipts. I know the players. We are, most of us, ladies of a certain age. I end The Ruins tour every week by standing in front of the wall of names and explaining that, of the 520 artists here, 98% are women. I don’t go on to reveal their age bracket because as everyone knows, that would be rude.

When a young mosaicist appears, whether in person or online, my ears perk up, I want to hug them and say, stay. Please, stay. Mosaic needs you.

Because we are in the midst of a great, modern mosaic renaissance. We are re-learning forgotten skills, elevating the artform to a different kind of glory. We are building incredible works of art. But we are also getting old.

Find me the cool kids in their twenties who are happy to live on the edges, break the scary rules, pull all nighters to hit a deadline. Kids who speak tech and mosaic may be the key to finding our way as the world breaks apart. The children raised to have never been without their smartphones, they are the next generation of mosaicists, like it or not. Their first instinct when communicating is to go to the screen. Don’t call them, they won’t answer. But build a line of communication that they understand and they may decide you are cool. Or cool enough at least. If mosaic can capture a small slice of Gen Z and younger, it may find itself becoming cool, really cool, for the first time since 547 CE. That’s when the famous San Vitale and Sant’ Apollinaire were consecrated in Ravenna. The golden age of cool for mosaic. An age it has yet to transcend.

In her day, Empress Theodora had the illusive IT factor, no doubt.

Or since 320 CE when the famous bikini ladies were today’s version of Only Fans?

The Room of the Ten Girls, Sicily, Italy

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I consider mosaic to be the coolest underdog medium that the art world has had the pleasure of rejecting for the last sixty or more years. I don’t mind how it is underestimated by critics and museums. In some ways, that underappreciation has laid fertile ground for me to make up my own rules. When only five or so people in the whole world are writing with intention about a contemporary artform, that creates a niche subject to champion. Part of my crusade for mosaic is looking for ways to honor its ancient roots while embracing new forms of communicating.

My latest experiment has been to build a succession of mosaic QR codes that take the viewer to very mosaic destinations. A tender trap set for the twenty somethings who prefer to talk through the screen. I love watching them raise their phones up to scan, even before quite realizing that this particular code is actually real life, something to be touched and appreciated from different angles.

A strange wake up call that may or may not connect to the cool kids.

After making the first few codes in mosaic, realizing that it’s not so hard to build them so that they actually work, and then further realizing that their destinations are truly endless, I decided to show everyone how to make their own.

I love sharing things that I am excited about. It really is as simple as that.

QR Code in Mosaic: Build. Scan. Connect is DISCOUNTED for its launch week through this Sunday, so today is a great day to help make mosaic cool again.

A graphic to help you see some of the quirky images you can incorporate into your coding with mosaic.

Thank you for being here with me,