OUR STUDIO:
Ed Marquand established Tieton Mosaic in 2012. Marquand’s long career in the art world began more than four decades ago as a designer, art director, and creative director for his company Marquand Books until he recently left the company to focus on the Tieton Mosaic initiative. Tieton Mosaic was inspired by vintage typographic and decorative mosaics in the New York Subway system. The National Endowment for the Arts provided initial seed funding to begin the studio, and has since supported the production of fifteen community mosaic projects.
Their largest project to date will be installed in the summer of 2024. It includes 27 mosaic murals for Sound Transit in Seattle. These glass mosaic murals will welcome visitors to the downtown Redmond, Washington light rail station, which opens in 2025. Six contemporary artists collaborated with Sound Transit and Tieton Mosaic to translate paintings and graphic works into mosaic murals.
Although each project presents its own opportunities, community collaboration has been a welcome component of Tieton Mosaic’s process for their public commissions. From stakeholder presentations and study sessions, to public voting on ultimate designs, Tieton Mosaic is adept at engaging important perspectives and diverse communities.
Tieton Mosaic Is Part of the Mighty Tieton Initiative
Marquand and his team started Mighty Tieton nearly two decades ago as a way to realize complex (often urban) creative ambitions while revitalizing a small agricultural town in central Washington State. Tieton Mosaic is a central component of the concepts. What are the needs from outside this area that can be produced by the talented craftspeople who live here? We have trained our workforce to create work of very high quality, in retail and warehouse spaces here that could no longer be used for their original agricultural purposes.
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The studio practice incorporates the talent and skills of contemporary artists with Tieton Mosaic designers and fabricators. Our collaborative team has extensive experience with the creative design process. In addition to our own community of artists, we also mentor new and emerging public artists. Some of our favorite and most successful commissions have been collaborations with artists have no previous experience with mosaic design and production or managing fabrication contracts. Our robust fabrication services allow creative support for the artists, and confidence and risk mitigation for the contracting entities.