I have lived all of my life in Thunder Bay, a city with a population of 113,000, located at the top of beautiful Lake Superior in Northwestern Ontario and bordered to the south by Grand Portage Minnesota. I became interested in art at a young age when I coloured on my mother's walls. The interest stayed with me throughout my life, but in more acceptable forms. I.e. using paper! I have dabbled with different art forms and pencil drawing over the years, but working in Mosaics has held my interest. This interest developed after I built a home in 1999 and had ceramic tiles left over. I knew there was something I could do with these. I gathered up a few more colors and proceeded to break them into little pieces. In order to create pictures of animals, flowers, birds and other objects, each piece is painstakingly broken, sanded, chipped and shaped into a piece that eventually becomes part of a tiled picture. As each picture was completed, I learned different techniques and used colours of grout in different ways. It wasn’t all easy and experimenting is a great way to learn but it can be frustrating!! (Removing and replacing grout or tile pieces from a picture that you spent 50-60 hours working on, brings it’s own challenges- but I’m here to say, “It CAN be done!”). Sometimes you won’t know for sure how a picture looks until it is grouted and if you don’t like it, you remove the grout! In initial works, my pictures had only a single colored grout but as I progressed I used several colours of grout in different parts of an image to add more contrast. Each tile also offers it’s own unique characteristics, such as having a shiny, textured, matte or multi-shaded finish. I frequent local tile shops, looking for that special elusive shade that is not in my current inventory of hundreds of tiles! I am a member of Artisan’s Northwest (a group of artists in the Thunder Bay area). As a result of this I participated in a show and sale of different artist's wares. I also entered Thunder Bay Art Gallery's exhibit: “Art for All”, and placed 4th in the 2005 exhibit. My interest in mosaic and ceramic tile work has taken me to hundreds of sites on the Internet, which is why I am now sharing my work with others through this site. I have about 30 pieces in my collection, hanging on the walls of our lakefront home. I do most of my mosaics in the wintertime, spending long hours working in my studio off the garage. I will eventually expand into different areas with this media. I’m presently experimenting; moving from realism to modern art styles and will be further expanding, to furniture or possibly murals. I started working with Ceramic Mosaics in 2000 and in these few years, my work has changed and evolved steadily, so the sky is the limit!! Every form of history makes a comeback be it clothing, architecture and automobiles and so will mosaics! Be my guest and enjoy the view! Chris Sato
Copyright 2005 Chris Sato
