Evan Rodgers

To re-create the Pergamon Hellenistic Mosaic, the first task that I needed to accomplish was tracing the outline of the parrot. In order to do this, I printed out a picture of the mosaic and taped it to a window through which the sun was brightly shining. I then took another blank sheet and taped this new sheet on top of the printed mosaic. This created a natural light that I could use to help facilitate my replication.

My second step was to cut the construction paper. My original plan was to cut the paper so that they would resemble the original shapes of the mosaic. However, after drawing a few of the shapes, I realized that most of them are extremely irregular. Along with this problem, the size of some of the original pieces were incredibly small, meaning it would make my interpretation of the mosaic very messy. So, instead, I decided to do simple squares instead of complex shapes. Another challenge I soon encountered was the meticulous process of individually gluing each piece to my retracing of the parrot. Instead, I opted to place glue in patches of the same of the same color. Then, I would take a bunch of squares of the same needed color and scatter them on the glue. After that, with a cotton swab, I would then arrange the pieces in the mosaic to properly preserve space to make it appear more like the original mosaic.

As I was constructing my mosaic, I took inspiration from the Vincent Van Gogh painting, as pictured below. This image was taken from the Vincent Van Gogh Experience, in Washington D.C.

Looking at the image, I took notice of the blending of the colors yellow, green, and blue. These colors are very similar to those that comprise the plumage of the parrot in the original mosaic. Moreover, the black background captured in the snapshot calls to mind the shading around the parrot in that piece, as well.

While constructing the replication, I realized that my method was still rather tedious, but I still believed that this was the best way that I could conceive of properly recreating the mosaic. Eventually, I realized that having a tool with a point might help me to move the pieces of paper in the glue more easily than the blunt cotton swab, so I tried and successfully used wooden skewers for increased precision. Overall, the process was at times painstaking, but was efficient in the end.