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I had a student today, nice woman, retired, picking up mosaic as a hobby. She's doing a landscape with those big square precut tiles from the craft store and she's setting them all in neat rows like bricks. Andamento, the flow of the lines, the direction the tesserae move, it's the whole conversation, right? It's what makes mosaic breathe instead of looking like a tile floor. I tried to explain why the river in her piece should follow the curve of the water, not the grid. She looked at me like I was speaking Ancient Greek. Which, fair. But here's the thing, I've been doing this long enough that I genuinely can't tell anymore if andamento matters to the average person looking at a mosaic, or if it's just us, the people who sit on floors cutting things, who care. Maybe everyone else just sees a pretty picture made of little squares. I still teach it of course. I'm stubborn. But sometimes I wonder if I'm passing on a religion instead of a technique. 😅

Third time was the charm but god it hurt. I'm working on this piece, a dog's face, big, maybe 70cm square, all in smalti, and the curve of the jaw wanted a flow I just couldn't feel at first. Cut it, laid it, stood up, looked at it. Wrong. Took it out. Next day, same thing. Wrong again. It's not even the time that gets you, it's the doubt. Is this actually wrong or am I too close to it? Do I keep pushing or trust the knot in my stomach? With mosaic especially there's no fixing it later, once it's set you're not moving it without damage. So you sit there with a hammer and a pair of tweezers and you just have to feel it before you cut. Anyway. Day after tomorrow I start the ear and I think I've got the flow now. Maybe. We'll see.

Three years. Three years this thing sat under my workbench wrapped in old sheets, half-cut, wrong, not working. It's a portrait of my yiayia's hands, she was a seamstress, those hands knew things, and I could not get the light right in the smalti. The gold kept coming out flat, like a coin, not like afternoon sun on old skin. Took it back out two months ago and finally saw what was wrong. Wrong andamento, wrong direction of the cuts. I'd been setting the tesserae like fabric folds instead of like hands. Had to pull half of it out and start again. Sent photos to the client this afternoon. She cried. So did I, a bit, alone in the studio with the cats looking at me like I'd lost it. Anyway. Sometimes the work needs to wait until you're ready for it. That's the thing nobody tells you.

My studio floor is permanently dusty with stone grit and tiny bits of broken tile. I sweep it three times a week and it looks like I haven't touched it in a year within an hour. I've given up pretending otherwise. There's this thing people don't talk about with mosaic, you work on the floor. Not at a table, not at an easel, on the floor. On your knees, leaning over, getting up stiff. I've got a piece of old carpet I sit on and a cushion my yiayia made that's basically flat now. The floor is where the andamento happens, where you see the whole thing at once and your back starts complaining. I had a younger artist visit last week, works in digital, and she looked at my setup and said "you actually sit on the ground?" like I was doing something exotic. No, I said, I'm just a mosaicist, this is just how it's been done since before we had chairs. Anyway. I'm about to sweep again. It'll be dusty by tomorrow.

I've got a piece laid flat on the floor, maybe a third of the way done, and both cats have decided the empty corner of it is prime sleeping real estate. Not the concrete, not the old rug. The corner where I haven't set tesserae yet. Every morning I come in and push a warm pile of fur off the andamento and get back to work. By noon they're back. I used to fight it. Shoo them off, shut the door, the whole thing. Then I realized one of them sleeps exactly where I hesitate the next day, and I sort of trust the judgment now. It's like a tiny furry second opinion on the composition. Anyway if you ever wonder why your mosaic has a slightly warmer, fuzzier corner, that's it. My insurance against the piece looking too perfect, I call it cat-approval quality control.

I have this piece, it's a landscape with a lot of tiny tesserae, and it's technically perfect, the lines are clean, the colors are all there. But it just... doesn't breathe. It feels flat, like a photograph. I've tried adding more texture with some rougher stones, even some broken glass, but it's not lifting it. Maybe it's the composition, or maybe I need to think about the 'andamento' differently. Any ideas on how to bring life into a mosaic that feels like it's just lying there?