A peacock's display is not vanity. It is an invitation - an enormous, exhausting, unmistakable request to be seen.
"The Showman: The Burden of Display" is a four-foot round mosaic built entirely by hand, tile by tile, using Opus Musivum - the most demanding of the classical mosaic techniques, in which every line of tesserae flows in concert with the ones beside it. The andamento, the direction the tile travels, was laid to mimic the natural zigzag follicle arrangement of a living peacock, so the surface reads less like a picture of a bird than like the bird itself.
The bird is worked in deep cobalt against a dark ground, its train fanning into blues, greens, and silvers that shift as you move past it. Small mirrored tiles are set through the feather eyes and catch the light like the real thing. A gold and black checkered border rings the whole and holds it together.
The title carries the piece: the artist made it to turn display into a conversation about connection - what it costs to be looked at, and what it means to be truly seen. For a St. Coletta audience, that lands close to home.
French cleats on the back let it hang as a wall piece, or it can sit on a base and be lived with as a table. There is only one. It will not be reproduced.
