Interview with mosaic artist, Marian Shapiro, continued.

Is there a typical process that you follow when asked to do a private commission?

Yes, basically I obviously will talk to the person about what they want. I will go and see the site if its appropriate for me to do so, if its not, if they’re overseas or Brisbane or Tasmania, then I will ask them to send photographs, if they can, so that I can get a feel of where the mosaic is going into. Then I will start to produce rough notes of ideas and very rough designs for people. If they want to go ahead what I then do is I charge a design fee, which is refundable and if people go ahead with the project it just comes off the total price. If they decide not to go ahead and nobody has yet then its basically just charged as a non-refundable design fee. I started doing that because it separates out the serious people from the non-serious and also it means if I spend 4 days coming up with something that somebody in the end doesn’t like at least I am getting paid a little bit for that time.
So we do that and then the client approve the design and then I will do things like get sample materials and for a large project I will make up a small sample board as well, sometimes in a couple of different colour schemes if people are as yet undecided. Then they get to approve the sample and once they have approved it I start making the actual piece. Then I keep them in touch with it as I go along with photographs. If something changes along the way or if I make a different decision or whatever I will always get the clients approval before doing anything drastic so that basically they don’t end up with a huge surprise or huge expensive surprise at the end. This way they feel very included in the process.
Sometimes people want you to include particular things like maybe found objects or bits of jewellery or sometimes people have used things like their child’s handprint. Sometimes those sort of personal things.

I guess the whole process would be quite personal.

Yes and you want to make it something that the client feels is uniquely theirs. Because I don’t repeat, I mean all the things I do are my own designs and are unique. So if someone says ’I like that, I want one of them’, from the website, I would say something like ‘Well that’s great that you like it and I am sure we can draw on it for inspiration to create something that’s unique for yours.’ But if you went and bought an expensive couture dress, that’s been specifically tailored for you, you wouldn’t like it much if you walked into a cocktail party and you found somebody else wearing the same one. So my pieces are like that really, they’re unique to the client.

Chess Table - Photo: David James

What processes have modern technology changed in creating a mosaic when compared to how it was done thousands of years ago?

I suppose the two main things are computers, in that you can use computers to design, although I don’t much, but you can, and other one I think is fibreglass mesh, which is my friend. I love fibreglass mesh because basically what that means is you can create a mosaic sitting in your nice workshop, then it gets cut up as it needs to be, taken to the site and installed. So if you are doing a mosaic which is, say, a floor insert you are not spending two weeks on your knees on the concrete floor sticking in little bits and chopping it up. You actually do it in your workshop, ship it on the mesh and its just whacked in. It also means that I can work for overseas or other parts of Australia without actually having to go there. You can do a bathroom without having to stand in somebodies bath for three weeks.

Conversely- what things haven’t changed?

Some cutting techniques I guess, things like people still cut marble and smalti with a hammer and hardy. A lot of the techniques of design that people use, the way that the pieces flow and the different patterns that the grout lines make, which are called opus, those haven’t changed. A lot of people, including myself, still use traditional ways of laying out a mosaic that people have been doing for thousands of years.

Mosaic art interview continued on next page
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