Flipping the Mystery Mosaic

As Resident Artist of the Wiregrass Museum of Art, I installed the Mystery Mosaic last April. 

This mosaic, at 50 x 50" (125 x 125 cm) is the biggest baddest free standing piece I have designed to this date.  

The coolissime aspect of this project is that this Mosaic would be built by the Visitors to the Museum ! They were the very ones who would actually be laying the 4096 little tiles on the model I had designed without telling anyone what the final mosaic would be ! 

Hence the dramatic "Mystery Mosaic" name !

We had planned it would take 2 month to lay the 4,400 tiles of the mosaic. It took 10 days and a group of very dedicated High School students !

The Mosaic in designed in Opus Pixellatum was realized upside down. 

On July 21st, I flipped the piece diuring the Art after Hours event at the Museum and the public, including some who had participated in the building, were able to see it for the first time. 



Flipping the Mystery Mosaic from Frederic Lecut on Vimeo.

 

I am a French Mosaic artist based in Alabama. My Art is about Inspiring people, I am presently working on huge portraits of the eyes of Yezidi Refugees and on an other Mosaic Community Project involving several hundreds participants in partnership with Troy University in Dothan and the Wiregrass Museum of Art.

If you would like to discuss how to use mosaics to develop communities or are interested by other aspects of my work, please contact me by phone at (334) 798 1639 or by email at frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com

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I've been taking my shower with Sean Connery for the past 3 weeks...

Let me explain...

I build most of my mosaics upside down, this is what us mosaists call the reverse method. Once all tesserae have been laid on the model and a support glued on top of them, you flip the mosaic and before you can further finish it.  Then you have to - painstakingly - remove the glue used to set the tesserae on the model. I tried different ways, but finally figured out the easiest way was to do this in my shower...

I am building a collection of Mosaic Eyes - Eyes are the first thing most of us consider when we first meet a person.

Apparently, nobody has ever done this, at least in mosaics. My good friend Joe Byers - a Viking shipwrecked in Pensacola, FL, told me that during the Italian Renaissance a famous painter specialized in eyes portraying.

Wealthy patrons would ask him to paint the eyes of a person they loved, who they should not have loved... They would keep the portrait in their office, knowing who these eyes belonged to, while visitors could only wonder...

I find it a beautiful idea. I researched it, for reference, but could not find the source. if you know about it, please let me in the dirty little secret !

Since 2010 I have created a few eyes portrait. Two of them are now displayed in the collection of the Alabama College of Osteopathic medicine and one of them shipped in November to Dubai and has now been sold to a collector in Pakistan.

Today, I would like to share with you the magic of unveiling a mosaic. This one is a portrait of James Bond's eyes - Sir Sean Connery.

I have explained before how I use the Reverse method for most of my work. In this method, you build your mosaic upside down and you do not really see it before you flip it.

So it is really a magic moment. Every time I come to this point, I hold my breath ! What is this going to look like ? 

I have never been disappointed so far ! 

And I believe like every sensible person does that Sean Connery is the one and only James Bond ! 

You can see some of my EYES MOSAICS on my Website Mosaicblues. If you would like to commission a Mosaic Eye Portrait of a person of your choice, please contact me by email at frederic.lecut@gmail.com, or by phone at (334) 798 1639.