Portland Mosaic Tour

by | Jun 19, 2018 | events | 0 comments

In January NEMS launched its first community project. Over 30 members made mosaic leaves from templates provided by Amanda Edwards. Amanda and crew installed these mosaics on a mural at the Ronald McDonald House in Portland, ME.

   

We visited the installation in early June as part of a Portland, ME mosaic tour. The tour started at Amanda’s Studio in Cape Elizabeth, Maine with light refreshments and a meet and greet. From there, participants visited the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) where they went on a special tour of the facilities and viewed the tree mural with heart-shaped leaves created by NEMS members. The mosaics in the mural were awesome, as you can see from the great pictures taken by Su Bailey.

 

But that’s not all. From RMH, everyone headed to downtown Portland for lunch and a walking tour of Portland’s Old Port and Art’s District lead by Amanda. The program ended at Allagash Beer, where Amanda installed a 92′ floor mosaic along the mezzanine overlooking their bottling facility. Everyone had a great time touring the facility and, of course, tasting the beer.

 

 

Artaic Tour

by | Jun 11, 2018 | events | 0 comments

 

NEMS members recently participated in an exclusive tour of Artaic, a company located in the Seaport’s Design Center. Artaic uses design software and robotic mosaic assembly systems to fabricate large custom architectural mosaics very quickly.

  

We had a lively discussion with Founder & CEO, Ted Acworth who discussed how the firm came to be and how it sources suppliers. He described several of the projects they’ve fabricated and was interested in feedback on how the software could benefit mosaic artists. Graphic designers showed us how to use the software to visualize and manipulate an original piece of artwork, illustration or photo into a mosaic and how that mosaic will look using different materials and grout colors. Then, we took a tour of the robotic assembly system. Mosaic tile is loaded into sleeves and the software tells the robot where to place each tesserae in a square foot frame.

  

Ted makes the software available to artists for free. You can check it out at www.artaic.com/tylist.