Wrapped Emotions--Picking Through the Pieces

This week at WE featured the first guest blogger. Our assignment then came in to create a mosaic.

My challenge to you this week is to create something out of pieces,
specifically, a mosaic. Mosaic is defined (Wikipedia, yay) as "an ancient and
contemporary art form which uses individual pieces of materials placed together
to create a unified whole. The materials commonly used are glass, ceramic,
marble, pebble, mirror, shells and china." (The differences between mosaic and
collage are that mosaics tend to keep the pieces individual, whereas a collage
is more overlapping...)But I don't care what you use (the ideas above, or paper
or fabric is fine or even cookies if you'd like - the sky's the limit)...break
something or cut something or separate something and then put it all back
together into a new and beautiful whole. Breaking something changes it, perhaps
irreparably, but it gives us a new opportunity, a new chance, a new beginning,
to create something different and something whole.

When this came through I was excited. Not only did I know exactly what I was going to do, but I already had all the materials for it. I was excited, and on Tuesday while I was telling Knight what the project was, he asked how long I had to accomplish this task. I told him, and he told me that I would never get it done in time.

You see, I have had these materials since, oh...June. Sitting there. Waiting.

Good plans. Not so great ambition.

So I set out to prove him wrong.

I had a table, tiles, adhesive grout, sealer. I had an idea, a plan, and started to create. I smashed the tile, picked the pieces I wanted, broke some even more, started putting them into a picture. As I did I thought about how symbolic this really is.

Breaking something to create something new. Some of the tiles were harder to break than others, just like people. I tend to be more stubborn. I don't want to be broken, to change. Most of the time, I really don't even want to become part of a new picture, unless it is a picture I picked.

It took a lot of pieces to create a whole table. There is big pieces, small pieces, curved, straight, bland, colorful, smooth, and textured. Each was used. Each has a part in making the picture complete. But each of the tiles cannot "see" the other tiles, cannot tell what their part of the big picture is, but as the creator, I know why each piece was picked, and I know that each piece was put in a certain location for a reason.

With my picture, I created smaller pictures inside the larger one. And unless I specifically show and tell someone what the pictures are, they probably will not see what I see. And I like it that way. It can mean something to me, but it's just broken tile to everyone else.