Falcon resident pieces the community together with new mosaic artwork

Ms Kruize is the artist behind the small tile creations, which have now spilled up the road to decorate the entrance to Perseverance Boulevard. 

After the old artwork that decorated the entrance to the residential street went missing, Ms Kruize started thinking what could she do to brighten up the neighbourhood.

“For a year I thought about it, ‘it really needs something there’, so about six months ago I thought ‘yep, I’m going to do it’,” she said.

Several meetings with the council and some letterbox dropping later, she got the green light to put two of her creations up on the wall  for everybody to enjoy.

The intricate designs use colourful tiles cut into different shapes to form estuary scenes featuring pelicans, blue manna crabs, dolphins and other iconic Mandurah sights.

One week after putting the two mosaics up for display she has already received flowers and letters thanking her for her contribution.

“People chat to you, some people want mosaics done,” she said.

Making the two mosaics took Mr Kruize’s a total of 120 hours, from coming up with the design, tracing it on a board and picking the tiles, to cutting the ceramics and gluing them into place.

“People think mosaics you smash your tile and just put it together, it’s not like that,” she said.

“All those tiles have actually been cut and shaped, so it’s a long process.”

Ms Kruize fell in love with mosaic making eleven years ago, when her daughters gave her a voucher to learn the technique for her birthday.

Prior to taking the course, she had been involved in painting, sculpting, and LED lighting art among others, but after giving mosaic a go she dropped everything to fully embrace the technique.

“It just clicked with me, I just loved it, I just loved the whole process,” she said.

“I’m fairly patient so I love the whole process, fitting things together, and I love the designing as well because I’ve done painting.

“I just love the tiles, I love everything about it, I don’t know why, it just happened.”

She loves what started as a hobby so much, that Ms Kruize said she even dreams about mosaics.

She has created plant pots, full size pieces, stands and decorations of all sorts, and she has even managed to make a mosaic on a glass door with glass tiles for the sun to shine through.

Most of the magic happens at the her home studio, where she has thousands of tiles classified by type and colour, a paradise for neat freaks.

“Even sorting tiles and putting them in colour it’s just lovely,  It’s just a whole lovely process,” she said.

She said she is already preparing her next piece, a full-size mosaic for her granddaughter’s 25^th birthday.

“It’s a huge part of my life,” she said.