November 2008 - Mosaic Update

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks making the large heart for the Heroes & Hearts event and with a few other commissions. We are really looking forward to 2009, when we plan to finally introduce our line of patterns. It's taken a long time solve the challenges of using the natural stone, but we've made some significant breakthroughs recently.

Please check out the video of us making the words "love" using Nero Marquina marble. We laid out each tesserae by hand in about two hours. Of course, there was a significant about of background which made those panels less time consuming. The front of the mosaic is the Painted Ladies design, which took over 500 man hours of mosaic assembly time. We'll be grouting this heart mosaic soon and the foundation will be taking possession of it soon. Also, we have a solo exhibit at the Institute of Mosaic Art currently on display through November 22. If you can make it to Oakland, you should definitely check it out.

Nick Berg
ExactMosaics
www.exactmosaics.com

ExactMosaics comissioned for 2009 Heroes and Hearts - Sept 28, 2008

ExactMosaics selected to make 3-D mosaic heart for San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

ExactMosaics was one of six artists selected to create a large heart (5’9’’ wide by 5’" high and 3’3’’" thick 3-D). After being displayed at the event, the Hearts will be sold and/or auctioned, with all proceeds benefiting the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. The Large Heart will remain at Union Square or other locations around the City for approx. 9 months before being delivered to their buyers
History

Hearts in San Francisco is a Bay Area-wide “heart installation” which debuted in the spring of 2004. While similar to Chicago’s “Cows on Parade,” the San Francisco version uses a heart icon, appropriate for a city that is recognized for its acceptance and tolerance, as well as being perennially open-hearted. The goal of this project is to become a unique hybrid of fund-raising, compassionate community involvement, and a positive nurturing of artistic expression at a time when it is sorely needed. The financial beneficiary of Hearts in San Francisco is the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, whose sole purpose is to fund projects that will enhance patient care and comfort at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH).

Beneficiary
The beneficiary of the Hearts project is the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, whose sole purpose is to raise private support for the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. The San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center’s mission is to deliver humanistic, cost-effective and culturally competent health services to the residents of the City and County of San Francisco, regardless of their ability to pay. The funds raised from Hearts in San Francisco will enable the hospital to make the necessary capital and programmatic improvements to maintain the hospital’s status as one of the best hospitals in the country and continues to provide the following services:

1. Only Trauma Center (Level I) in San Francisco
2. Largest Acute & Rehabilitation Hospital for Psychiatric Patients
3. Only Psychiatric Emergency Services
4. General Community Hospital for San Francisco’s most needy
5. Referral Center for the Department of Public Health and its affiliated partners

It has been on the forefront of critical and compassionate care for patients with AIDS, including an innovative and remarkable procedure developed to prevent the transmission of HIV from birthing mothers to their unborn infants. SFGH is also a teaching hospital, affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) for over 125 years. It supports training and research programs for all four UCSF graduate schools: Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, and Pharmacy. To learn more about how you can be a part of supporting the life-saving work at San Francisco General Hospital, please call the SFGH Foundation on (415) 206-4478.

Heroes & Hearts 2009 Luncheon to be held in San Francisco's Union Square, Thursday Feb. 12, 2009, 11:30am

Our Lady of Guadalupe Mosaic

We recently received a commission to do a mosaic of the Virgin of Guadalupe (also known in Spanish as "Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe" or "La Virgen Morena"). The Virgin of Guadalupe is the image that miraculously formed on the cloth of Saint Juan Diego from the residue of Castillian roses that he had collected. This is an important religious symbol in Hispanic culture and we hope this mosaic will be a wonderful tribute to this sacred image. I can't help but to point out the parallels between the mosaic and the cloth of Saint Juan. On both, the image of the Virgin Mary is formed using random natural materials. In Saint Juan's cloth, it is the natural pigments from the roses that were divinely arranged to create the image. In the case of our mosaic, we are using the natural veining within marble to re-create the image. The mosaic is to be installed in a fountain. I'm looking forward to getting you images of the installed mosaic soon.

Best,
Nick

Etsy Mosaic Store

Today, we opened our mosaic store on Etsy, an online retailer specializing in handmade crafts.

I learned about Etsy from a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Although we will always maintain our own mosaic artist store on the ExactMosaic website, it's great having a centralized marketplace to display our handmade mosaics. Also, I found the emergence of Etsy fascinating on a few levels.

First, the concept is extremely novel and it features the best aspects of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. It's leveraging a huge untapped pool of user generated content: namely the craft wares and handmade products of artisans. Spend any amount of time in San Francisco's Mission District and you'll realize that there is no shortage of cutting edge artisans, from high-cache professionals to starving students and part-time hobbyists. The Etsy website has an impressive 3-dimensional interface for browsing the myriad craft-wares. Like the USS Enterprise zooming across the stars, you can fly TOWARDS AND PAST the product pictures in high-speed viewing. I can't help thinking that this is what the future of virtual shopping is going to feel like. My only criticism would be how surprisingly unremarkable the Etsy logo and home page is.

My second observation was that, as noted by the SF Chronicle, Etsy follows on a "craft renaissance among people in their 20s and 30s". As a millennial I noticed many of my generation have taken professional jobs in urban centers where they spend their weekends at downtown farmers markets and street fairs. While enjoying the weekend weather, they are buying handmade products...and their baby boomer parents are right there with them. I don't want to over analyze it, but I do think the increased demand reflects some desire (from both generations) to have one-of-a-kind items that allow them to break free from an urban/mass-produced/IKEA environment. What's surprising is that some millennials are joining (and some are even leading) the ranks of the craft making community. Alan and I are not the only twentysomethings in the mix. In fact, last week, I was perusing one of my girlfriend's fashion rags and discovered that Taylor Mosher, one of my college dormmates from Pepperdine, had launched ARCHANGEL a line of silver sterling jewelery for men in partnership with Brody Jenner (of MTV's The Hills). It looks like the line was picked up by LisaKline, so they must be doing well.

Finally, I can't help putting on my "venture capital hat" (please don't fall asleep on me) and noting that Etsy is doing very well. Accel Partners just funded a $23 million Series-C with a $90 million post-money valuation. Sales were $27 million in 2007 generated from a nominal ~$0.20 list fee and 3.5% of any item sold. Not a bad value proposition for any artist when the alternative is to set up your own online store which 1) won't generate as much traffic as a centralized marketplace and 2)is technically very challenging to do for the non-programmer.

-Nick

Double Happiness Mosaic (Shuang xi)

A request from a designer based in Vancouver inspired us to try our mosaic lettering technique in other languages. Naturally, we couldn't resist doing the Chinese character for "Happiness" in nero marquina marble. Keep in mind that we can make custom mosaic letters and custom mosaic symbols to specification. In other words, if you tell us what the character is...we can memorialize forever using natural stone. Check out the lettering section of our online catalog for the latest mosaic lettering designs.

Mosaic Address Numbers, Mosaic Letters, & Mosaic Signs

So, we've recently added a new product line of mosaic letters and mosaic letters using our technique. We've made these very easy to purchase through the website at a fairly standard size of 12 inches high. The numbers are perfect for mosaic address numbers for the front of a home or building. The standard letter sizes are also 12 inches high and can be used for indoor and outdoor building signs.

Please don't forget that we can do custom numbers, letters, logos, and characters in any language. Architects and designers have repeatedly stressed their desire to get custom letters and numbers in the fonts and sizes that they desire. The reason, of course, is that the font style is often important in design of a trademark. We believe that ExactMosaics has a distinct advantage over other mosaic artists because our technique allows us to recreate any design using the natural veining within marble.

Each letter or number is face mounted with clear plastic film. Installation is very easy. You simply lay the mosaic section into thinset. Once the thinset has dried, you can pull the plastic film off of the mosaic tiles (the mosaic tiles will stay in the thinset). Finally the mosaic is grouted and left to dry.

First Post - New website up

Well, I've finally made the changes to the website that we were looking to do. I had to learn Dreamweaver and some JavaScript to add many of the elements. Note that we now show our designs using the Google Maps API, which I think does a wonderful job of showing the overall mosaic design from a distance, as well as, the detail of each stone (and how each stone's unique features are used).

We'll continue to build out the available designs for sale on the website. In particular, we're working on adding some designs on high-demand subject matter for our mosaic backsplashes and mosaic address letters. These designs include: geometric patters, florals, cityscapes and landscapes.

It's been a busy month with a few large architectural mosaic projects. We're definitely looking forward to posting some pictures of this project for you soon!

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