By Wendy Wenaus
Creating art by piecing together small bits of tile goes back as far as 4000 years. The first mosaics where terracotta cones pushed into walls and floors to create decorative patterns. Later coloured stones were used, but it was the Greeks that used geometric patterns and detailed scenes of people and animals to create the mosaic art form we are familiar with today.
Klaus Joehle’s love for mosaics started when he was four years old while on a trip to Spain with his parents. The little tile pieces of the mosaics reminded him of the legos he loved to play with. Years later he reconnected with mosaics when he was working in the construction industry in Calgary renovating old houses. Tiled entrances would be removed, cleaned, and put back.
Later, when he had his own construction business, he would sometimes surprise his clients with a mosaic inlay while working on their tiling projects. Klaus and his wife Roberta opened the doors to their workshop and showroom in Nanaimo’s Old City Quarter last year. His market ranges from individuals coming in to buy a small piece to hang, to bathrooms or wine cellars that can cost up to $150,000 and take over a month to complete. Klaus’s installations of company logos or other designs can be seen in the entrances of buildings throughout the island. Many of Klaus’s pieces are still designed as inlays for floors or walls, but he finds that most of his customers prefer to use them as wall hangings so they can be moved. Klaus says, “Now most of my stuff is art, because its progressed so much, people just hang it up”.
Marble and granite are not easy materials to obtain or work with. Marble comes in more than 130 different colours from 8 countries around the world. The K2 stone mined at a quarry in Duke point is the only local source of marble. To get his tile pieces the shape he wants, Klaus cuts a block into strips then into smaller blocks. He then uses a nipper to cut them into the exact shape he needs. Cutting granite and marble into such small shapes is difficult because they are actually soft stones that chip and break easily. Through trial and error Klaus has developed techniques that are unique to his style.
“When you have to learn on your own,” he tells me “you sort of have to play with things, sometimes that’s good and sometimes that bad, but in my case it turned out good.” One of his mistakes resulted in slivers that Klaus turned into a unique style other mosaic artist are unable to copy. A black bear picture and a geometric design inlaid in an antique side table are proof of a mistake.
A new and exciting direction for Klaus resulted when a visually impaired gentleman came into his showroom. As he watched the man feeling the mosaic he realized that he couldn’t get a sense of the picture. This led him to consider doing pieces with raised and indented tiles. “The Bagel Chef” is the prototype for this new interconnectivity style. It is hanging on the north side of the building on Fitzwilliam and Wesley Street. Klaus encourages you to view and touch the piece. He says, “Mosaics age better when touched and the more it is for the visually impaired the more visually interesting it is too”. 
He hopes to eventually install another larger donated piece in the Diana Krall Plaza in downtown Nanaimo. With this installation like “The Bagel Chef” Klaus wants it to be accessible for people to touch as well as look at. Klaus tells of ruins that have been found thousands of years old with the mosaics still in tact. There is very little that can damage a mosaic.
These art pieces made from little bits of stone glued on a surface are really worth a trip down to the Old City Quarter. Klaus and Roberta’s workshop and showroom are located in the alley below McLean’s Specialty Foods on 426 Fitzwilliam Street and opvven 11:00 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Saturday. More of these amazing pieces can be viewed at badboysmosaics.blogspot.com.
Located at: 426 Fitzwilliam St Nanaimo, BC, V9R3B1. (250) 616-2905.
