Dear Jennifer,

Yours is and interesting question, "Why I did Ichoose to use mosaics in my work?".

Well, I guess I didn't really choose mosaics, it seems they chose me. I'd have picked something easier, like broken plates, or basketballs in fish tanks. Maybe I should call this essay "My Life in Art Through the Looking Glass"... naw.
Anyway, way back when I started thinking about going into the arts as an undergraduate at Idaho State University, the opportunities for someone making a living as a fine artist were perceived as slim to nonexistent, or at least that's what my parents and the counselors told me. As a result I was encouraged to look into a field that might have more practical appeal in Idaho. My Grandmother had been a jewelry designer in San Francisco, so that gave metals some validity that painting or sculpture didn't have. From those years of studying jewelry design, working with precious metals and stones,as well as techniques like enameling, I got a taste for using materials that had a metallic shine and a depth of color that just couldn't be achieved with paint. During a tour in the Army I was stationed in Europe for a couple of years. I used my free time to study painting, and my leaves to visit the great museums and art capitals on the continent. I'd pretty much decided to take up the life of a painter at this point, and relegated my love for shiny surfaces to the past. Then early one summer I went to Florence and visited the Uffizi Gallery. In the first gallery were the Italian Primitives with their wonderful altarpieces covered with gold leaf. The morning sun was just cresting over the hills and the light came raking through the windows to illuminated the works. I just about swooned from the glow. At that point I decided that I wanted to incorporate that kind of light into my own work in some way that wouldn't be see as imitative if those old masters.

Fast forward about seven years, and I'm in New York finally taking a stab at the big time. While studying at the Art Students League on the G.I. Bill during the day, and painting most of the night, I would take long walks around Time Square when suffering from painters block. While out for one of these nocturnal constitutionals I chanced to pass a sleazy XXX rated movie theater when some thing caught my eye. No not bimbos in pasties, but a flash of light that reflected off the wall behind the cashier. It was covered with tiny mirror tiles, the kind that you might see on a disco ball, but this was a whole wall. I knew then that I had to get my hands on some of that stuff, but where? I spent the next two months looking for somewhere to buy mirror tiles. I finally found some at a notions shop in the garment district. Within about two weeks I'd bought them out. Then I found an old guy downtown that freelanced at making the tiles to order. After going into debt for my mirror tile habit I did what any addict would do, I decided to cook up my own tiles. I went out and bought packets of designer mirror squares, several different types of glass cutters and just started cutting until I got some thing that I could use. Cut fingers and broken mirrors aside, I'd finally gotten control of the glass bug. Now I could cut what ever I needed.

Well, after a long run of paintings that were fairly well received, I got bored with just using the silver mirror and gold leaf. I made some calls around. A very friendly guy named Ned Smyth (a great artist in his own right, who also uses mosaics) steered me to a shop that specialized in colored glass for the stained glass trade. They had several colors of mirror, which I used in turn for different pieces. As time went on and I started looking at what was available at the store, I started to use plain opaque colored glass, first just as accents but later as the major surfaces for the works I was doing. The more I used the glass the more I became interested in the history and classical techniques of mosaics. There is a material presence of color in the little blocks of glass that can't be duplicated with paint. It's a type of body color that has a stability and depth that seems impervious to time. A month or two ago I read an interview with Tim Leary, he of LSD fame, in which he said, "human beings are lumivors", that is, we eat, at least in a metaphorical sense, light. The mind needs light to perceive reality. Glass has always been used as the best way to manipulate light. Just look at the lenses, telescopes, and fiber optics man has made with the stuff. Then there's the spiritual side of the equation. Making images through the tedious work of individually placing tiny chunks of color requires a lot of discipline and commitment. That is why for my money the greatest mosaics of all time have been created for spiritual elucidation, and usually depicting religious themes. The Byzantine Empire probably left us the greatest legacy in the mosaic tradition. It really takes the perseverance of a monk, excuse the pun, to pull it off.

Reviving an art form that reached it's height about a thousand years ago has a great appeal for me. It shows that no matter how advanced our technology may be, or how clever the artist, great art requires first and foremost a compelling vision.
I could go on for pages as this is one of my passions, and I feel I've only begun to tap the potential of the medium, but six hundred words is enough for now. So once again Jennifer, thanks for your interest, and if there's any thing else you'd like to know, just ask.

LOREN