Right-size your life, reduce your climate footprint: A mosaic about how size matters

Once upon a time, I made a mosaic about the idea of having “enough” as part of my Fiddling While Rome Burns climate change series. I decided I was going to use one rock and only one rock (and every last scrap of it) to prove that it could be enough. Well, we all know how that turned out: I had too much.

Since that piece—(More than) Enoughis being shown in this year’s Mosaic Arts International exhibition in Detroit, I thought it would be appropriate to make my piece for the Mosaic Art Salon (a silent auction during the annual conference) in the same vein.

Swoon-worthy mookaite, pre-chopping

I chose a beautiful piece of mookaite courtesy of Marian Shapiro that had been sitting on my shelf since last year’s conference, knowing that this would be the right way to do justice to this gorgeous material. One of the reasons I love this “enough” approach to making a mosaic is that it really allows you to celebrate the material and its unique personality. For instance, the mookaite cut very differently compared to the limestone that I used for (More than) Enough—it was so much more irregular, which definitely forced me out of my comfort zone.

“Enough (Size matters)” (2017), 12″ x 12″ — one single piece of mookaite

The substrate was too big for the size of the mookaite. I knew this from the start. By the title, Enough (Size matters), you might think that this is a commentary on the rock being too small. You would be wrong. This is about the substrate being too large. It is about resisting the urge to fill the space with stuff for stuff’s sake. It’s about looking at your lifestyle and evaluating what’s really necessary to meet your needs. Do you have three extra bedrooms because the kids have left home and now you’re empty-nesters? Does each adult in the house really need his or her own SUV just to go to the office and back? Do you really need to buy another pair of shoes just because there’s still room in your closet? This about making sure your stuff, broadly speaking, is the right size for your life. Those offering advice on weight loss often tell us to use smaller plates and bowls to help control portion size. It’s a nifty mind trick, and it also works with consumption in general.

So, this mosaic’s message in a nutshell: use quality things, use them to their best and fullest, embrace minimalism and the space to breathe, relish what you have rather than fixate on what you lack, and, if you can, downsize where it makes sense.  It’s as simple as that and the climate will thank you for it.

Quite possibly my favourite pair of tesserae in the whole piece. Look at those triangles!
Cropped to the ‘right size’… ;-)

4 Comments

Brilliant! This piece, and the philosophy behind it, is inspiring. After downsizing last year, I am mindfully working to embrace exactly what you expressed. I so love what you’re doing here, with one, beautiful rock. Actually, I like that the substrate is too big. To me it gives the “right size” mosaic room to breathe. Just as we should embrace open space and breathe.
This piece will be bid up very high, I have no doubt. I am sad I will not going to be there to see it! And to hear you speak…
Have a great conference, and I expect I’ll see you next year!

Thanks Lynn! I was sad you weren’t there! Well, will just have to connect in Boston :-) There was a little bidding war on my piece, which felt good. (And I do agree with you, by the way, on the substrate size…I like the room to breathe.)

[…] So where did this class—Creativity Through Constraint—come from? Well, remember that mosaic I made from the infamous “bacon rock”? It was, hands down, one of the best creative experiences I’ve had in my career so far. I took one rock, chopped it up, and made a mosaic out of it using every last scrap, and in the process I learned so much about myself as an artist and it opened up so many possibilities in my andamento. I loved it so much that I did it again a little while later with an amazing piece of mookaite. […]

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