Coloring Massive Spaces With Ceramics

Andru Eron: I am the owner of New York Tilemakers. I wear many different hats in the course of doing my work: artisan, designer, fabricator, and artist.

AE: Our specialty is large-scale ceramic mosaics. Most of our business comes from fabricating custom ceramic tiles for mosaic murals. Our clients are artists who commission us to create ceramic tiles for their public art projects. These murals are displayed in public places, such as airports and schools. We help artists translate their creative vision into art that is permanent and durable. We also offer art tiles that are handmade by skilled artisans in small quantities for residential projects.

AE: After I went to art school at Parsons School of Design in New York City, I started working in residential and commercial construction while I worked on my art at night. A friend of mine was teaching a class in clay, pottery, and tilemaking. He encouraged me to sign up. I took the class and started experimenting with making all kinds of tiles. People kept telling me I should sell my work, and after many, many months, I understood that I really could. I launched my business by creating and selling handmade ceramic art tiles for residential clients.

AE: We worked with contemporary artist Mariam Ghani on a mural for LaGuardia Airport in New York City. It’s a 400-squarefoot artwork titled The Worlds We Speak [above]. It visually represents the 700 languages and dialects people speak in the five boroughs of New York City and the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. We researched and represented census data and information about endangered languages. We embossed the circular tiles with the names of specific cultures. We made more than 3,000 of those tiles and thousands of other tiny ceramic pieces in the mural by hand.

AE: I start by creating designs on the computer in black and white. Then I send the files to a company that makes lasercut neoprene rubber templates. I assemble the templates and then push them into moist clay to emboss the relief designs. Since it’s a relief tile, the design is not flat; it has some dimensionality. I create customized sizes that can fit together in all kinds of grids. My clients install the tiles on their own. That allows me to focus on the design of the tiles and not the on-site installation.

AE: We have a project in Tampa, Florida, that we’ll start soon. It will probably be our largest-scale project yet. The total size of the mural could be as large as 16,000 square feet. This will be an outdoor mural, so we must carefully consider our materials due to the severity of storms in Florida. I’m really looking forward to bringing the artist’s concept to life by using their aesthetic to make their vision a reality.