This isn’t new (two years old), but it’s new for me, and perhaps for you too. “One Blood, Many Nations,” a United Nations mural mosaic painted live by Lewis Lavoie.

What I love about this piece is that it’s not a computer mash-up of miniature photos that thanks to the magic of digital matchmaking render out to create a larger whole. It is instead a painstakingly planned and executed exercise in manual dexterity that involves, not several hundred images, but a scant 20. Which when placed in near each other proximity yield something else, not something better.

Full the full image, continue.

Nothing against Michelangelo, but Lavoie’s individual parts are every bit as interesting as the patchwork whole.

Hours and hours into my filming of a One-on-One series on Illustrator CS4 for lynda.com, this is a personal delight. B/c what it proves (to me, anyway) is that you can skirt the tools and get marginal results, or you can take the deep dive and arrive at something absolutely devine. Regardless of your tools, palette, or approach, art is something that happens in the folds of the mind.

(Okay, so maybe you already knew about this. But it reminds me of roughly one minute into a particular dekePod. Plus, damn it classes up the site!)