Saimir Strati

Saimir Strati is a mosiac artist who makes art pieces out of various materials. He is from Albania and started his work in the art world by doing restorations on mosaic in archaeological areas. Strati is working to set a Guiness world record with each of his works, each one beating the last. He does live broadcasts of his work while trying to set the record in art.
I find his work to be very interesting ad unique in the fact that he tries to set records with his art pieces. I also like that all of his works represents reuniting the world in one way or the other. the variety of materials in such a traditional art technique is very individual in the craft.
This is one of Strati's more well known pieces. He has made a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci out of nails. The amount of time it must have taken to compete this, just using a hammer and nail as your tools must have been exhausting and painful for your hands. I find it very impressive that he found so many nail colors so as to create the variety of shadows and highlights in both the face and the hair. I do wish that there was more light int he eyes, they almost look void of a pupil with how it is.









This is one of his more recent works which is made entirely of coffee beans. I wasn't able to find a decent image of the piece without a figure in the picture, but at least with him in the photo is gives a sense of scale as to how large this piece is. He did this piece to depict a sense of world unity. He wanted a variety of ethnicity present.He also gained a world record with this piece. I don't know how I feel about the world record thing. I feel like it calls attention to a craft that isn't as common as others and its done in such a beautiful way, but I feel like it almost cheapens the quality of the piece as art.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saimir_Strati
http://1800recycling.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/da-vinci.jpg
http://www.saimirstrati.al/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/66.jpg