Magnetic mosaics, how cool is this?

At the end of last month, the great kitchen designer and blogger Ann Porter wrote a post about a magnetic mosaic made by an Australian company called Motifo. If you don't read Ann's blog, KitchAnn Style, you ought to. Ann's also on Twitter as @KitchAnn_Style.

Motifo sells a kit of 25mm x 25mm (a little less than an inch by an inch) tiles and there are enough tiles in the kit to cover a space 70cm wide by 190cm tall (that's about 27 and-a-half by 75-or-so inches). The kits come in two color palettes; classic (gray tones) and warm (warm, sunset colors) and any kit can make any pattern you see here. Any kit can also make any pattern they offer on their website. So when you're tired of Edvard Munch's The Scream, spend a little time and reconfigure it to be Kylie Minogue (it IS an Australian company after all).

The kits are sized to fit the front of an Australian refrigerator. US and Canadian fridges are a great deal larger, so you won't be able to cover yours completely. But why limit yourself to the front of a fridge?

This puts the P in PSA

This video was making the rounds across the wide expanse of the Internet yesterday and it hits on a topic I haven't barked about in far too long. I'll get to that in a sec, in the meantime, get a load of this:

The ad's playing on Brazilian TV right now and translated into English it reads something like this:

Pee in the shower! We want everyone to do it! Men! Women! Children! Brazilians! Or not! Nobles! Commoners! Musicians! Sports stars! People half-human, half-monster! Twilight creatures! Brazilian legends! Greek legends! Good people! Not so good people! Artistic geniuses! Scientific geniuses! Circus performers! Lovers! People from other planets! Movie stars!

To sum it up: If you pee, we want you to do it too! (when you flush you waste up to 12 liters of drinkable water / 4380 liters in one year)

Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic Forest.

This ad was produced by Saatchi and Saatchi for the SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, a non-profit, non-political foundation dedicated to the preservation of the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest is a unique, enormous forest that encompasses an area that includes coastal Brazil and Uruguay and then extends inland to Paraguay and northernmost Argentina. The Atlantic Forest surrounds some of Brazil's major population centers. It's a fragile, wildly productive ecosystem and Brazilians are right to be concerned about how their activities impact this region.

Like everywhere else in the developed and developing world, urban Brazil has water problems. One of the many reasons countries around the world are having water problems is the omnipresence of the flushing toilet. Wise resource use is a bit of a hot button issue of mine. Unfortunately, so much of the "greening" of the world is a marketing campaign that really doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Using less water is hard to make a lot of money from, so it tends to get overlooked. The US leads the world in household water consumption (no surprise there) and the EPA estimates that on average, 27 % of the 400 gallons of potable water consumed by an American household gets flushed down toilets.

I for one would like to applaud the the SOS Mata Altantica Foundation for making what's not a bad idea to begin with palatable to the masses. Well, the Brazilian masses at any rate. Can you imagine something like this showing up during commercial breaks for American Idol? Not bloody likely.

Peeing in the shower would save at least a flush per person per day. It doesn't sound like much but that's 1.6 gallons with a modern, efficient toilet. It's up to seven gallons on an older toilet. Those kinds of changes add up. So whattya say? Who's ready to xixi no banho?

Laura Rendlen, the painter turned mosaicist

I first saw this mosaic, Leonardo, when I was paging through the 2009 edition of Mosaic Art Now. I stopped turning pages at that point and just stared. Before I read the title of the piece, I knew exactly who the subject was. Leonardo is a gesture drawing done in smalti and marble, and Laura Rendlen succeeded in capturing the very essence of the man Leonardo Da Vinci. She reduced Da Vinci's early 1500s self-portrait to a series of shards and shadows without losing anything yet at the same time, making his likeness uniquely hers. Brava Laura, brava.

Laura Rendlen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a major in sculpture. After she graduated she started painting scenery and props. At the suggestion of her partner, she started painting with smaller brushes and set about the business of transforming homes. Together, they became experts in murals and trompe l'oiel. Over the next 25 years, they were awarded commissions to do some exemplary, high-profile work. You can see some of her painting on her website under Custom Murals and Painting.

After 25 years spent doing residential and commercial work, Laura wanted to do something different. Something that would keep her off ladders for a change. As luck would have it, a client asked her to design a mosaic back splash and she agreed to do it. She threw herself into the project, researching materials and techniques, and the resulting mosaic changed the trajectory of her life. To quote from her website:

Mosaics combine the tactile construction of sculpture, the vision of painting, and the timeless permanence that I had been searching for in art.

Laura's work betrays her background as a painter. There's a knowing quality at work here and it's fantastic to see her refer to the history of art as she sets about creating an art of her own. To see more of Laura's work or to contact her about buying her art, please go to her website.

Currently, Laura's gearing up to teach a class in mosaic art at the Chicago Mosaic School, the only school of its kind in North America. Based on what I see here, I cannot imagine a better teacher.

An artist's portrait: Carole Choucair Oueijan

Cerulean Rendezvous

Ever since I met the great Sara Baldwin of New Ravenna Mosaics last spring, I continue to be exposed to deeper and finer expressions of the mosaic as art. It's been a real adventure and the more I learn the deeper into I get. New Ravenna Mosaics led me to Mosaic Art Now and through Mosaic Art Now I've been privileged to meet a number of fine art mosaicists. In what I plan to make a regular feature of this blog, I am going to start writing profiles of these gifted artists.

Carole Choucair Oueijan's Dreamer was a featured work in the current issue of Mosaic Art Now and I started corresponding with Carole through Facebook about a month ago. Carole was born in Beirut, Lebanon and is of Lebanese and Greek heritage. Carole studied loved painting in oils and water colors from an early age and studied fine art in Beirut. Her oil paintings of Eastern Mediterranean people and places led her to Greece in 1989 where she discovered the nearly extinct art of mosaic. Carole studied under the tutelage of Orthodox clergy who had the task of preserving and creating the art of classical iconography. From Greece, Carole moved to California where she began applying her painterly eye to her signature mosaic style.

Carole works in smalti (a kind of glass) and natural stone and her work starts as a drawing on canvas. She then stretches her canvas on a frame and begins to select and cut her smalti into small pieces called tesserae. Carole then glues the smalti tesserae and pieces of natural stone down to the canvas. Carole works with her materials face down, so she's essentially working in reverse. During the months it takes her to complete a work, the only way she can see her finished product is with her mind's eye. Once the pieces are glued into place she covers the back of her work with concrete and lets it set. It's only then that she turns it over to see the finished piece.

The perfection and nuanced color of her mosaics attest loudly to the power of Carole's imagination. I mean, look at these mosaics!

Dreamer

Dreamer detail #1

Dreamer detail #2

Mermaid

Mermaid detail #1

Carole does commissioned work and you can look through the rest of her portfolio on her website. The images expand when you click on them, so be sure to spend some time on that site. Her website too shows the art she still creates in media other than mosaic and it lists her numerous awards and upcoming exhibitions. Drop by and say hello.

All work shown ©Carole Choucair Oueijan and used with permission.

Speaking of urinals

On Saturday I sent out a plaintive cry to the blogosphere, "Help me find the perfect urinal for a master bath project oh wise and powerful Internet." I've been inundated with links and suggestions since Saturday afternoon.

I am leaning heavily toward the Starck by Duravit just in case you're interested. However, somebody set me a link to the men's room at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI. Oh my word. Would that I had the budget to commission something like these:

Lord, by Matt Nolan

Patron, by Matt Nolan

Pontiff, by Matt Nolan

Water, by Ann Agee