Chicago Potholes Beware: Bachor’s Mosaics are Back

Back in June, I posted about Chicago-based artist Jim Bachor who took it upon himself to tackle the city’s pothole problem by filling them with handmade tile mosaics.  He’s recently popped up again with a new approach to his guerrilla pothole repair. He’s transitioned from mosaics featuring arbitrary serial numbers and simple descriptions (e.g. “POTHOLE”) to beautiful floral designs. So far, Bachor has given his floral mosaic treatment to four potholes throughout Chicago; locations and photos can be found on his website. He’s also been commissioned for some truly beautiful installations, photos of which can also be found on Bachor’s site.

More info: bachor.com (h/t: boredpanda)

Jim Bachor’s pothole mosaic art installation in Chicago featuring tile artwork

 

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A Photo Mosaic For The Ages

In an interesting combination of time-lapse photography and photo mosaic design, UK-based photographer Noel Myles creates remarkable works of art. Nearly 15 years ago, Myles created black and white platinum/palladium prints of trees throughout the eastern part of the English countryside. A decade after that, he photographed the trees in color. By “cutting and pasting” these photos together, he creates a sort of time-lapse photo mosaic of each tree. He refers to them as “still films.”

Noel Myers mosaic art made from timelapse photos showing a tree through different seasons and stages of life

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Digital Interactive Mosaic Event: GettysburGreat Fundraiser


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Online Photo Mosaic Fundraiser: The Mario Mosaic Mural

A wide shot of the completed Mario Online Interactive Photo Mosaic

What happens when you take two world class organizations, The Pittsburgh Penguins and The Mario Lemieux Foundation, and combine it with our mosaic technology, services, and attention to artistic detail: one amazing online photo mosaic experience. The initial goal was to create a large permanent 20ft x 8ft mural in new Penguins CONSOL arena, however with the addition of touch screen kiosks and an online photo mosaic, it became much more. The Mario Mosaic was a great way to involve the community and help raise funds for cancer and neonatal research; without a doubt it has become a main attraction at the new hockey arena.

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Shape Mosaics: The next big thing

***1/6/2015 UPDATE***
You can now place your Shape Mosaic order through our website!

Photo mosaics are a passion of ours. We work hard at pushing the mosaic concept to new heights every day. That’s why we’re super excited to introduce a new kind of photo mosaic to our gallery: Shape Mosaics. Rather than building a mosaic based on the color and detail within the source image, these mosaics build a specific solid shape out of your cell images. Perfect for brand logos, silhouettes, and solid shapes.

A shape mosaic of a butterfly, by Picture Mosaics

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Mosaics Give a New Perspective on Classic Art

An example of Lee Kyu-Hak's Mixed-media Mosaics

They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. While exploring the online world of photo mosaics, I came across Kyu Hak Lee’s mixed-media mosaics. Beautifully innovative, his work is an homage to the iconic artwork of Vincent Van Gogh. By cutting small slivers of Styrofoam and wrapping them with newsprint and magazine pages, Lee creates lush, vibrant landscapes of color. Each piece is strategically placed to perfectly mimic Van Gogh’s unique brushstrokes.

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‘A Day in the Life’ of Diabetes Photo Mosaic

An online interactive photo mosaic is the perfect way to bring people together for a good cause. Three years ago, we teamed up with the American Diabetes Association to create a fan-driven photo mosaic. The goal was to show the world what a day in the life of diabetes is really like. The photos came pouring in and the results were truly inspirational. With social sharing and audience engagement being a key factor, the ADA online photo mosaic has played an important role in diabetes awareness these past few years.
The online webpage hosting the American Diabetes Association Online Photo Mosaic

 

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Artist’s Mosaics Fill the Potholes of Chicago

After the winter season, city streets can wreak on your car. Winters in Chicago can be especially harsh: a recent pothole count reached the 600k mark. Sometime in 2013, Chicago artist Jim Bachor decided to rectify this problem with the art of handmade mosaics. While we tend to keep our focus on photo mosaics, we like to keep our ear to the ground with a wide range of mosaic projects. This project in particular really caught my attention.

A close look at one of Jim Bachor's Chicago pothole mosaics

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The Use of Garbage: Photo Mosaics from Junkmail

Advertisements, calendars, photos, greeting cards, and other mail we receive every day can be white noise to our eyes. I found an artist, New York’s Sandhi Schimmel, who took all that junk and turned it into treasure. She collaged unneeded mail to create breathtaking mosaic portraits of women. Her brilliant use of color give these flat images great depth and detail. This is exactly what I love about photo mosaics,

Sandhi Schimmel's Junkmail Photo Mosaics

Sandhi Schimmel’s junkmail photo mosaics

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Choosing a Photo Mosaic Source Image

One of the most important components of a photo mosaic is the source image. A source image is the bigger picture that the smaller photos (called “cells”) will create. Any photo can be used as a source image, but not just any photo will the completed photo mosaic that WOW factor. The real question is how well the photo will survive the mosaic transformation. For this post, I’ll be focusing on portrait photos. Landscapes, logos, and other non-human subjects will be addressed in future posts, so stay tuned!

When using a photo of people as your source image, it’s important to consider facial recognition. In order for facial shapes and details to survive the photo mosaic transformation, you’ll want the faces to encompass a fairly large portion of the image, measuring at least 1/3 of the width and height of the entire photo. This will allow a great amount of detail and clarity to come through in the photo mosaic. Here are a couple examples of photos that should produce good facial recognition:

Black and white photo of two brothers, one giving the other a piggyback rideColor photo of a little boy whispering to a girl holding flowers

 

 

 

 

 

 

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