Ask A Genius 929: I offered to help clean: or, Diary of a grotesque foot in a messy office
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Somewhere there is a photo if it exists, of Tom Cruise holding my grotesque foot, because it resided at Jimmy Kimmel’s for several years, he was at a party there. Somebody made him hold the foot. I saw the photo, but I didn’t get a copy sent.
Then it is resting upon a giant, 3D Jesus, Mary, and John mosaic…
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: micro mosaic?
Rosner: No, full on mosaic, it is about 22 inches by 16 inches. It is one two 3D mosaics. The difference is a mosaic uses pieces for most of the mosaic ranged upwards from a quarter inch square. If you build a monumental mosaic on the side of a building, like they do a lot in Russia and in Mexico, I am sure those tiles are an inch across or more. So, mosaic is anything bigger than a quarter inch. Micromosaic is in the range of anywhere from a tenth of a millimetre by like a half of a millimetre. This piece here is from one of the old masters. He used teeny pieces. I got it for cheap because it’s broken. So, I am going to put it back together, but those pieces there are about a tenth of a millimetre thick by less than a millimetre long. Then they’re ranging for a cheap mosaic for a piece from a millimetre thick to three or four millimetres long. Back from the ‘50s, Havana was still a tourist place. It was huge for tourism. Casinos, America’s play land until Fidel Castro shut it down. We have a big Jesus here missing some parts. I have replaced about half his parts. That’s probably from the 1930s.
It is 3-dimensional. That is, instead of being flat and shaded to look dimensional, it is 3-dimensional. His arms are rounded. His stomach is rounded. Everybody’s head, it sticks out from the surface. He is up from a cross. The cross sticks out a little bit. It has got to be much harder than a flat mosaic. I found only 1 other 3-dimensional raised-relief mosaic, same subject: Mary, John, and Jesus up on a cross. It is in a church in Baltimore. It was built in the 1930s. So, somebody must have seen that work, liked it so much, that they commissioned somebody, probably in Italy based on the materials and the way the faces are rendered. Where a good mosaicist will have the pieces radiate out in arcs from around the eyes and around the mouth, it is a way to get good shading. I believe a pro mosaicist in Vienna or Rome, Venice, did that thing. It weighs a ton, probably 8 pounds. It was out of a wall some place 40 years ago and then smashed into the ground and knocked a bunch of pieces off. I stopped myself from doing more because I have other stuff that I need to be doing rather than being doing patches on Jesus’s loincloth. I have an ‘80s TV because we used to have an aquarium with a goldfish on top. You can’t put a goldfish on top of a flatscreen.
We have the Mindy Kaling celebrity autobiography. I have that for reference because I am writing a fake celebrity autobiography. I find hers pretty close. I haven’t read it in a while. As I remember it, she doesn’t do the autobiography standard thing. Where, you start at your childhood and go chapter by chapter until you reach the point you’re at now. I feel like with a celebrity autobiography. She assumes you know who she is. She tells little anecdotes from her life. Maybe, interspersed with some autobiographical stuff. In a celebrity one, you’re not obligated to just tell the story of your life in any kind of linear way. People more want to hear what your life as a celebrity is like without it having to be linear. Yes, I have a wall of mosaics. I have Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit. I have Frida Kahlo. I did that one. It is largely based on somebody doing it In the same medium, which is mini-stick plastic tiles from Germany.
Jacobsen: How long did it take?
Rosner: A few months, a couple of months, it was art therapy. I would go visit my mother in law how as in care. We would do mosaic stuff together. She was losing her words, but she still had a good visual acuity ability. It gave me an excuse to do mosaics. It was good to hang with her. It gave her something she enjoyed doing. Made out of the same stuff, you’ve got Samuel L. Jackson with the gun made out of different stuff. You’ve got Marilyn Monroe. You’ve got a prancing horse from the 1960s. This is the seal of the United States of America. An eagle holding arrows, an olive branch, it is made out of baltic amber, which is fossilized tree sap. From millions of years ago, trees spit out drops of sap, given the right conditions, those will fossilize into this golden gem-y kind of things in a variety of brown-y, cream-y colours. Some lunatic did a 15” by 17” great seal of the US out of amber and glued all the pieces into place. Once I decide I like something, I really like it.
[Recording End]
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