Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Eve Mosaics

It's not from Los Angeles, but this is kinda neat:

The picture at right is a closeup of a mosaic made of Legos.

Since this is a Christmas Eve posting, can you guess the subject from the closeup?

The mosaic was built in 2004 in Spartanburg, SC by Eric C. Harshbarger at the Christian Supply store. The store and artist actually planned this for a year, according to Eric's blog.

And the store owned it and may still be displaying it, for all I know.

Eric is not a mosaicist, really, more a puzzle-ologist who does these amazing installations--as well as creating gizmos, aplets, and doodads.

OK, here's the finished work, another photo from Eric's own blog (hope he doesn't mind). To the left of the mosaic is the picture it was based on, a Nativity scene by (I think) Tom DuBois. DuBois' work--many Nativity scenes and paintings of Mary--can be seen here at LDS Art.

The mosaic is 90 inches by 70 inches and Eric limited himself to 8 colors. He had three days in SC to build it, and about a third of work was done in advance. The store wanted him to work on it standing up so the customers could see a work in progress. I get the impression from his blog that doing so was not easy. I found more pictures of the work in progress on Eric's blog and here.

But the effect is stunning, isn't it? The torchlight especially.

Eric spent 34 hours over three days, and used 30,000 pieces on this mosaic.

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