Portrait of a young woman mosaic

Edgar Miller
c. 1940
Mosaic tile
L 94, W 76 cm

Mosaic design was one medium that Miller loved to practice, often taking an assortment of small tiles and even tiny broken stone fragments to produce abstract or expressionistic forms of flora and fauna. It was rare, however, for Miller to attempt a mosaic design with realistic details. This piece depicting a young woman is perhaps Miller's greatest attempt at creating a mosaic showing a full human form, and in which the personality of the subject is so fully revealed and felt. Miller had attempted once before to execute a mosaic of the same or a similar model for the Carl Street Studios, but his first attempt, though noble, was not particularly realistic and showed Miller's lack of experience with the craft.

Other mosaics by Miller at the Carl Street Studios and the crypt of the Madonna della Strada Chapel on Loyola University’s campus also use similar techniques of attempting depth and gradients of light. In this attempt, tucked away in the Furedy Bedroom at the Glasner Studio, Miller finally achieved the success in mosaic aesthetics he had been striving for. Although undated, it is believed that this embedded piece, was added as a part of the work commissioned by the second owner of the Glasner Studio, Frank Furedy.

Here Miller draws inspiration from mosaic subjects of ancient Rome, and more contemporarily from German modernist designers of churches and religious spaces, who employed similar tile laying techniques. Hundreds of irregularly shaped tiles of various shapes and sizes interlock almost perfectly to form the image of a young woman. Even smaller, cut tiles add texture to her form and shading to her features. Dressed in a draping robe, wearing no foot coverings, and attending to a plumed bird on her shoulder, the young woman stares directly at the viewer with a stoic, piercing expression. More abstractly designed birds encircle her head as symbols of fealty to her radiance.