koi mosaic

A few years ago at Coronado High we did a big installation in the hallway of the math building. The teacher who was the driving force behind this project later commissioned me to do a piece in her back yard, on an outdoor fireplace chimney. She gave me total artistic freedom, which is my absolute favorite thing. I ended up doing a koi pond, but instead of the usual looking down on the tops of the fish, I made it seem as if the viewer was in the pond with the fish. To this day, this is one of my very most favorite mosaics, ever. It was with this piece that I really started thinking about andamento, flow and tesserae placement a lot.

My memories of this job include: hot summer days, working alone and listening to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, his biography of Shakespeare, and Travels in a White Man's Grave by Donald Macintosh on audiobook. The clients were out of town, and I got to jump in the pool whenever I wanted to. Sometimes I'd bring along my little African dog...

Thanks, Sandy Fish (yes, fish for the Fish)

the before picture

Here is the sketch

Here are some shots of the work in progress. I made all the aquatic grass (fresh water seaweed, a term I learned with this mosaic job) and fish in studio and did all the water on site. This mosaic is made of stained glass, river rocks and mirror.

grouting the finished mosaic