Mosaics for me is the midway point between drawings and photography, which are one dimensional, and sculpture that is three dimensional. And not only do i feel that way about it viscerally, literally it is categorized as two dimensional in the art world. Possibly the image did of Marilyn Monroe out of Easter M&M’s has had more effect monetarily as an image producing more work from it, than any other single image I have ever done. My body of work has created work in and of itself but it’s rare to find one image that returns exactly what the previous image did which is a mosaic. The difference is that the mosaics I was hired to do was make a mosaic out of the product being sold. Harry Potter out of Jelly Belly jelly beans, because the book had Bertie Botts beans. RX America asked for a map of America made of their medicines. Nature Made Vitamins had women sculpted from their vitamins.Starbucks logo out of coffee beans. For some of these I would put an add in The Art Institute of Chicago’s art school, and hire four or five art students and the mosaic would be finished in a few days. Everyone always had a great time in the production of it.

Sometimes it was more difficult to shoot the mosaics, than make them, since they were either four feet square or eight by four feet, shot with a view camera, the camera had to be over the middle of the mosaic, that couldn’t be altered. but the mosaic could be tilted so it wasn’t flat. The goal was to tilt it up 25 or 30 degrees and with the tilts of the view camera from and back all was at the same angle so it appeared to be flat on. Amazingly, all the clients wanted the final mosaics resined so they could be put in the company conference rooms! That being said they were all frustrated with the cost of making it permanent.