Piece Offering

Jonathan Mandell takes a painterly approach to his please-touch mosaics.

by Deni Kasrel

Michael T. Regan THE TILES THAT BIND: Local mosaic artist Jonathan Mandell created this mural for the National Constitution Center, a dual testament to reflection. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Beside the National Constitution Center's "We the People" mural is a placard that asks, rhetorically, if you can see yourself amid its depiction of historical figures and regular people engaged in various acts of citizenship. But maybe the question's not so rhetorical: The 6-by-10-foot piece has mirrors built into one of its sections.

"The idea of the mirrors is that you're engaging the viewers to see themselves in the government," explains Jonathan Mandell, the artist who made the mosaic. "And because it's at a place where thousands of kids a day go though the doors, I want to cater to these kids, so I chose to have the mirrors at a more kid height."

Youngsters are often inclined to reach out and touch the mural. Touching art is surely a no-no in many instances, but here it's encouraged. "If that happens, I'm thrilled," says Mandell. "To me the beauty of a mosaic is that is has a tactile element. I think of my mosaics as tactile paintings."

Mandell, who resides in Bala Cynwyd, is something of a maverick in the realm of mosaic artistry. "Most people today, when they think of mosaic, they think of a decorative craft kind of object," he observes. "I don't think of it that way. ... I take a more fine-art approach. I think of the medium as being ideal for exploring color composition, spatial composition, line and depth perspective."

The title of a class he has taught at PAFA and Main Line Art Center — "A Painterly Approach to Mosaics" — is a succinct summary of his style. There may be elements of abstraction in certain works, but Mandell primarily sticks to the realm of the representational. He creates portraits, landscapes, liturgical illustration and scenes from everyday life — mostly for wall pieces, but he sometimes works in a sculptural 3-D format.

Mandell does plenty of private commissions, and he has numerous pieces in public spaces, including Citizens Bank Park, the National Liberty Museum and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

His materials include ceramic tile, glass shards, semiprecious stones, minerals, metal, shell and mirror. The basic building blocks are ceramic tiles, which Mandell carefully cuts into shapes that enable the grout lines around these pieces to serve the same function as drawing lines, such that they project notions of volume, motion and depth perspective. Other materials, like glass, can introduce convex and concave shapes that reinforce the tactile quality the artist so admires. "The fact that you can touch a piece is eliminating barriers ... it's another way of being able to experience it," says Mandell, who clearly wants to offer viewers more than something pretty to look at. "I like to give food for thought."

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George Krevsky, who represents Mandell at his gallery in San Francisco, says Mandell's approach to mosaic is atypical, with "almost a naïve quality to it. It's in the folk art tradition."

The artist agrees with that assessment. Even so, Mandell notes, that what may appear to be simple on the surface is really quite involved. He is a stickler for detail and for adhering to fundamental elements of composition. He pays attention to how light falls in real life and takes pains to accurately render how a shadow will appear in his imagined setting. In a mosaic of a guitarist, grout lines around the player's hand are specifically shaped to convey a sense of tension in the fingers.

"I think that's where the word 'fine' comes in with fine art," he says. "It's taken to another level. So that there's a greater sensibility to what you are doing."

(deni.kasrel@citypaper.net)