ISLAND LIFE

His paintings hang inside galleries and homes around the world but Tasmanian artist Tom Samek’s latest work is one of his most visible.

The 68-year-old recently completed a large-scale marble and granite mosaic on the exterior of a private home in Sandy Bay’s Regent St.

The eye-catching design, inspired by nature and the nearby rivulet, is the culmination of many months of careful planning, cutting and gluing.

Samek was approached by the Betts family – dad Rod, mum Dominique and their three teenage sons – to create the artwork.

“They came and approached me about doing something on the front and side wall of the house,” Samek explains.

“I had a completely free hand … that was the best thing. I just drew it up and showed them the plan.”

The Betts loved the design and Samek started working to make his vision a reality.

He cut all the marble and granite with a water saw in the garden of his North Hobart studio. He then transported it to Sandy Bay where he glued individual pieces on to the house, on pre-cast panels of various depths prepared off-site by construction company JMK Construction Group.

“The whole thing, from start to finish, took about seven months,” says Samek, whose wife Tracy helped with the project.

Samek says he and the Betts have received a lot of positive feedback about the design.

The artist expects this will be his last large-scale art work, as he plans to focus on smaller works from now on. Other largescale works by Samek include a mural in the Federation Concert Hall foyer, a floor mural at Frogmore Creek in Cambridge, a fish mosaic in the Railway Roundabout Fountain, the mosaic exterior of the MyState building on the corner of Melville and Harrington streets and the children’s play equipment in Wellington Walk.