In his retirement, my Uncle Kevin has become an artist. Mosaics are his thing, using small tiles, usually glass and often incorporating mirrors. In addition to selling them, he’s given them away to family and friends.  Every time we’d visit, he’d have a piece or two sitting in the front room for me to bring home. Unfortunately, every single time, someone else would walk in and end up claiming the piece(s) and so Kevin would promise to have one for me next time.

On one of those visits, he showed me a piece that he had collaborated on with Edie girl that he was planning on sending to one of his sisters. Now with all due respect, as much as I love his sisters, I do think I have dibs on a one-of-a-kind Kevin/Edie piece (Aunt Jenny backed me up on this), so I claimed it for my own and it now hangs proudly in my hallway.

When we arrived at Thanksgiving, Uncle Kevin presented me with a new piece – most definitely one of a kind:

He used an old griddle (cast iron I believe) as the basis for this mosaic. I suppose I could hang it, but it’s quite heavy and would require some serious wall anchors.  My first inspiration was to find some old game pieces to set atop it, to make it interactive coffee table art, but before I could find an old game to pluck pieces from, Christmas happened. And somewhere along the line, LEGO figurines found their way onto the tray and we sort of realized they were perfect. So more LEGO figures landed on there resulting in the current configuration on my living room coffee table:

For the time being, our art tray lives on the living room coffee table, although I’m thinking about moving it to the sunroom once it warms up. The light in there is much better than the living room and is sure to be impressive with the colors of the glass. Of course, a change in location might require some new figurines to be incorporated.  Maybe Uncle Kevin will be inspired to make some!