"Non Sprecare La Grazia" Mosaic by Toyoharu Kii

A leader of the cross-cultural craft resurgence, Japan-based artist Toyoharu Kii creates his intricate mosaics with hand-cut Italian marble and smalti, Venetian glass made by the same Italian family for over 400 years. Using traditional Italian techniques, Kii’s art is nonetheless modern. It is monochromatic, abstract, and highly textured and highlights the involved and technical art of mosaic making. In this mosaic entitled "Non Sprecare La Grazie," Kii draws gestural lines through the collision of fields of dense tesserae. Sprawling likes fissures in the earth, the irregular lines reveal the mosaic's subtle shifts in pattern and depth, traceable only by the voids they create.