Krishna Sand Mosaic
This mosaic is based on the beautiful and touching photograph by Jeffrey Boardley. It was created by using decorative sand and lots of glue, experimenting with this new medium at the same time as creating. Krishna has a lot of texture created by layering adhesive and sand.
Creation of the Krishna Sand Mosaic
After Tim Carmany and I won best in show at the Canton Museum of Art’s annual art show, he arranged for us to have a showing at the next year’s exhibition. We decided for the show we would make all new works using different materials than we typically work with. I got the idea of working with sand from the Tibetan Buddhist monks that create sand mandalas. Unlike monks, I don’t have patients to spend a hundred hours making something to be destroyed, so I knew I was definitely going to use glue.
My first thought was to create an image of the 14th Dalai Lama as a child surrounded by a mandala. I had it designed and ready to go when a high school friend Jeffrey Boardley invited me to his photography exhibit. Many of his pictures were taken in India during the festival Krishna Janmashtami. The one that I couldn’t get out of my head was this one, of a little girl dressed as Krishna. She had this pail she carried for donations, and my friend said that she could make enough donations during the festival to help support her family for the year. I asked if I could use his photograph for this sand mosaic, and fortunately he agreed.
Since I had never worked with sand before, it was all trial and error. A smarter person would have started with something small, but I decided to dive right into an 8 foot mosaic. By the time I got the hang of it, I was finally able to add shadows, highlights, and tiny details as necessary. It was a struggle, but I’m really happy with the results.