Carole's Eyes Series

Every morning begins with the animals, group hug with Tomoe and Itto.

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Then we go together feed the chickens (the ones you hear in my videos) and pick up the eggs. 

As I have to walk through my studio to get to the chickens coops, I generally stop for a while to lay a few tesserae...

I'm presently working on an other pair of eyes. The same eyes, with variations, Variations on Carole's eyes !  I realized I like working on series; you take a design, a beautiful one, and then you create several pieces based on it to express different feelings, moods, or ideas. 

 

I completed the first Carole's Eyes last December, but it fell from its wall while I was gone and got damaged. This kind of stupid things happen, it was my fault. I am restoring her now, she will look just as good as before. She'll look great, the greatest ever, believe me...

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Blue Carole, the second of this series, is almost complete, I still have to grout and frame her. She will be there by the end of the month...

And presently, I am working on 2 more variations. I played with colors, and added borders to them, the same kind of borders the Romans loved to use.  Why do you think I'm traveling all around the countries that were once part of the Roman Empire ?

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This is Greek Carole Sepia. On the bench. I am building her reverse method like I do 98 % of my pieces. She is a mix of Opus Pixellatum and Opus Tessellatum. 

The frame is a very important enhancement for a painting. It attracts and focus the eyes of the amateur. Unfortunately you cannot frame a mosaic with a painting kind of frame. For the past 4 years I have been using 3/16" steel welded frames. They are an excellent way to structurally reinforce my mosaics, but aesthetically they bring nothing like a frame does to a painting. So I decided to follow the Masters by incorporating the frame in the mosaic itself !

Fish mosaic from Pompeii, 1st century AD

So here you have the model of Greek Carole Sepia...

And here is a Bluesier Carole. The original idea, it will be different. Opus Pixellatum allows me to improvise, and I am going to fully take advantage of this fantastic opportunity.

This one will incorporate more vegetal patterns, Acanthus leaves, possibly  wisteria cascades...

I am currently experimenting with layered models. Instead of creating one very complicated model I create several of them and use them as layers, just like you can in a program create an image by combining several graphic layers. Some layers pixellatum, some tessellatum...

So you see, I am very inspired by modern technology to realize my pieces. 

• The theme or subject is always shrouded in a mysterious aura !  What's behind the Eyes? What's behind the Mirror of the Soul ? What's behind the Scouts of the Heart ? 
• The Aesthetic is enhanced by 2nd century AD border patterns and ,
• Techniques based on 21st century graphic softwares allow for a dreamatic new type of mosaics. (Yes, "dreamatic", it's new, its great, it's dreamlike, it's dreamatic ! believe me...)
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Frederic Lecut is a French mosaicist.

In 1992 he made Alabama his home.

His Art is about inspiring People.

You can contact him either 

by phone at (334) 798 1639 or email at 

frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com

You can also subscribe to his

NEWSLETTER

Carole's Eyes unveiled

Carole's Eyes is an experimental piece. I used both Opus Tessellatum and Opus Pixellatum techniques to compose it for I wanted to create a dramatic effect by contrasting the different arrangement and textures of the 2 techniques.

Opus tessellatum was the most commonly used technique in the production of Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine mosaics. It involves the use of tesserae (small cubes of stone, glass, ceramic, or other hard material) of uniform size to form pictures and designs. The tesserae are applied following a pattern actually DRAWN on the support.

A Roman Duck realized in Opus Tesselatum

I invented Opus Pixellatum in 2015 to create my series of Yezidi Eyes mosaics. In Opus Pixellatum, the tesserae are laid as the pixels of a digital photography or the color blots of an impressionist painting. The model I use is not a drawing but a grid  guiding me to lay of the tesserae. in Opus pixellatum, you do not see what you are doing until you have covered half the area of your mosaic.

One eye of my Opus Pixellatum Yezidi 37 mosaic

With Carole's eyes I used Pixellatum for the eyes themselves and Tessellatum for the weeping willows branches in front of them. I was as usual laying my mosaic upside down (reverse method) and it was not until I flipped it that I could realize, with relief and great satisfaction, that the result exceeded my expectations. 

Carole's Eyes - just flipped.

Flipping a mosaic is always a magic moment, enjoy this dramatic video of my flipping this handcrafted piece ! 

 

Carole's eyes is entirely made of glass (recycled and gold smalti) and measures 17 x 47"  (42 x 118 cm). It will come like all my mosaics with the whole hanging hardware making its installation very easy and will be available for sale 2nd week in December.

I am a French mosaic artist based in Alabama. 

My Art is about Inspiring People.

 

If you would like to commission a portrait or are interested by my work, please visit mosaicblues.

 

 You can contact me by phone at (334) 798 1639 or by email at frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com

 

You can also subscribe to my NEWSLETTER