Sands of Time is my response to the terrible sacking of the National Archaeological Museum in Baghdad, Iraq. The oldest examples of mosaics found to date, from 3500 B.C., were found at Warka in what is now Iraq.

My mosaic, Sands of Time, ncorporates genuine antiquities including: three bronze fragments from the underwater excavation of Cleopatra's palace at Alexandria, Egypt; a 4000 year old Afghan bronze mirror; a number of 4th and 5th A.D. Roman coins; a terracotta oil lamp and amphora and other ancient fragments of artifacts. They are strewn across a mosaic floor that alludes to the 8th Century B.C. pebble mosaic at Gordium in Phrygia (now in Turkey), which is the oldest mosaic floor that has survived. It is as if a museum had been looted and the thieves left artifacts of little importance to them dropped in their haste--the detritus and bric-a-brac that people leave over the centuries, asking: is that all that is left of them?

I teach the use of Italian and Mexican smalti at the Santa Barbara School of Mosaic Art.