The seed of this germinated on a movie set in the south of France in the summer of 1971.   We stayed at a farmhouse called Le Cam in Saint Martin de Signance, then a sleepy farming town just north of Biarritz.   On one of the shoots the director came to ask me if I would cover a shiny silver cigar box with mirror to make it brighter.   I suggested that it might be hard to photograph as plain mirror and offered to make a mosaic design on the top that would make it easier to focus the camera.   The result was a mosaic of several clear blue glasses inset among the pieces of mirror.   As I walked out to the set with my creation, sun shone down through the blue glass, bounced off the silver cigar box beneath and there before me were different shades of colored mirror.  Ah... epiphany.

     Over time, the work has evolved from stained glass window designs to the more detailed work that is possible when individual tessera are held in a cementenous matrix.    The constraints of designing for wind load and a backlit opening gave way to color experiments that explored what was visually possible from the smallest pieces.    Now, jewellike accents the size of a matchhead are regularly worked into the mosaics.  Sometimes they can be seen from across a room, while others are only apparent when viewed close up.   The inherent stability of mosaics has also allowed the use of sinuous curves that would not survive the flexing of a stained glass window.    It is the movement toward fine detail and slender shapes have made it possible to execute the ocean waves you see in the small ovals.