The Tree of Life - Picking Up the Pieces

In December 2025 I installed my mosaic, The Tree of Life, at the Edmonton Convention Centre. It was a project long in the making and dear to my heart. This project was ignited by the war in Ukraine, starting in 2022. As i sat in deep sadness thinking about the people whose lives were being destroyed daily i realized there was another, less obvious destruction occurring. The monuments and mosaics that filled the public spaces were being erased. Some may argue that that was not a bad thing as many of these works were a result of Soviet Propaganda commissioned by Lenin, but all these works were assembled and designed by Ukrainian artists. Often the design held hidden messages in opposition to the Soviet regulations. The thought of all these works laying in heaps beside blown out buildings was heartbreaking. Originally i wanted to rebuild two mosaics created in 1967cby Alla Horska and her team of fellow artists that had been destroyed in Mariupol but that required permission from Alla Horska’s estate. That was not supported so i needed to find a different path. I decided to design my own Tree of Life that addressed directly the destruction of public monuments in times of war. This is the mosaic that resulted after 4 months of assembling.

December, 2025

Tree of Life - Picking Up the Pieces Project