Sometimes, I think that each tile is a small sculpture and, like a sculptor, the mosaicist must know well the material he uses. The cut of the tile is fundamental in the artistic mosaic: it must be clean and precise, so the card has the desired shape and to occupies the space as I want. However, there is a balance, an exchange of forces, between my will to give a specific shape and the will of each material to be cut. I work with venetian smalti, marbles, stones and gold and each of them has its own peculiarities.
For example, marbles are very different one from each other in compactness and porosity: some allow maximum freedom, others have imperfections, veins and when I go to cut I cannot ignore these characteritcs, because the material seems to break where it wants.
So I give up and indulge the nature of things: it is evident that the tile must have the form that nature has imposed on it. I just have to enhance this shape and insert it as a “variant on the theme”, for my mosaic texture. This is one of the ingredients that give rhythm to my compositions.
