Ben Cuomo

My mosaic of choice was the Dolphin from the Delos House of Dolphins. I am not much of an artist; however, this is my best effort as a recreation. This overall process took me about a month to complete, and my other posts on this blog display the steps I took. My purpose for this was to recreate an ancient mosaic and at the same honor the original work which can still be found today on an island which is part of Greece. This work also has symbolism. On the original design there contains a trident as well as the dolphin, this is used to honor the God Poseidon. The materials that I chose to use were as follows, black pony beads, used for the main body of the dolphin, white rice, to fill in the rest of the body, and red lentils, which I used to border the nose as well as the fin. Over the creation process not everything went according to plan, but I did my best and got it done, and I am happy with my work.

This choice relates to my mosaic in two ways. First of all, my mosaic is of dolphins, and this song uses ocean noises, a pretty obvious connection there. This wasn’t the only song of this genre I listened to, but due to its obvious connection this is the one I chose to link. The main reason I chose this was because its slow, calming nature. Through this process I used Lo-fi music, such as this song, to help calm me down and get me through the project. Specifically, I listened to Lo-fi most while doing the actual creation of the mosaic. It calmed me down, which due to my decision to “risk it”, or not glue any materials down, was necessary to keep my hands steady so there were no mistakes. Overall, Lo-fi music, such as this, greatly aided in calming me down and allowed for me to complete this project.

Guiding Questions:

1. I personally had to adapt while creating my mosaic, did anyone have similar experiences?
2. For me the creation was by far the hardest part of this project, do you all agree with that or disagree? And why do you say that?
3. I know after this first attempt at creating a mosaic there is stuff I would do differently if I was to do it again, would anyone else, and if so what?
4. How did audio effect your project as a whole? Building off of that, were there certain parts you used audio more than others?
5. What do you guys’ think is the best material to use for mosaics?

During the process of creating my mosaic I took a field trip to a Van Gogh immersive experience in D.C. On this trip I took a picture which was part of a projected display. This image relates to my mosaic in the clear lines being used to delineate shape. Specifically, this can be seen in the orange picture of Van Gogh. The clear lines create a much better shape and in turn create a much better image. In my mosaic, I traced first and followed those lines to create a clear shape that closely mimics the original mosaic and in my personal opinion (again I’m not an artist) this use of lines helped my mosaic come out, well, somewhat well.