Lesh

Rhode Island, USA
Textile Designer

Being the assembler of this Mosaic and seeing everyone's tiles as they came in, I had to provide the artists of the tiles adjoining mine with extra masks to ensure that I would see only their edges and in doing so, be able to have the same challenge that everyone else had.

Of course once I got those borders - I had to throw out any preconceived notions of how I thought I would design my tile, so I just tried to let go of that notion and be loose (which is not an easy thing for someone used to designing with a tight hand) and let my tile follow it's own course of development. And as part of the object of the whole project was to have some fun with it, this seemed only appropriate.

When I saw there was so much blue in my borders I decided to do a self portrait - more of an artistic response to a period of personal change that I was going through at the time. It's title is Transitional Blues, the blue relating to a little of the blues as in the music, and a little of the blues as in being sad and blue as in my favorite color.

I began by extending the side border colors by stretching the pixels across the width of the tile. I then added dark lines for texture and used the liquify filter to make them undulate over the area that reminded me of sky and grass.

There was a shape in the side border that looked like it might be lighthouse, so I copied it and flopped it over to complete the image, and then repeated it several more times, alternating the orientation and adding color and texture to make a decorative border. I then blended the solid blue of the bottom edge up into the row of beacons, and added some soft edged blue lines across the top of the tile.

In the upper right hand corner I placed a photograph of some beach sand, and enlarged it so that the grains look to be the size of pebbles, and then painted in some brighter colors and used the poster edges filter to accentuate the surfaces. I then added a blue stone heart in amongst the colored stones.

The next step was to add the picture of myself, taken from a black and white photograph. I then adjusted the opacity and brightness, and colorized it with a blue tint. I decided I wasn't happy with the appearance of transparency, so I filled in the background behind my face. I played with the scale of my profile until I found a size I was satisfied with.

The final image I put into my tile was the hexagram. Of course it didn't seem proper to just pick one at random, so I formulated a question and threw my I Ching coins and received the answer to my query. It is the hexagram that represents Duration, or Endurance in the Midst of Change. I used the layer effects to change the lines from a dark blue to a luminous golden yellow with a soft drop shadow. Having used all these personal symbols and references I considered my tile complete and resisted the urge to continually tweak it any further, and placed it into the Mosaic grid with the other finished tiles.

Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. Copyrights are held by the individual artists.