Fairfield Inn by Marriott Mosaic Installation

As Chief Strategy Officer of Fair Oaks Farms and an expert in “Strategic Leisure,” the positioning, planning and development of experiential places, Michael S. McCall wanted to bring both contextual appropriateness and uniqueness to the Fairfield by Marriott Fair Oaks Farms, in Northwest Indiana, located just outside of greater Chicago, on the way to Indianapolis. The result is an 80-foot-tall barn with a gambrel roof and 99 rooms to accommodate more than 300 guests. The hotel’s most unique space is the “Pool Party,” a playful, colorful, sun-filled room found in the “milking parlor.”

Emphasizing that ART is imbedded in the word PARTY, the dominant element of the Pool Party room is a bright and whimsical mosaic designed by renowned artist R. Tom Gilleon in collaboration with Artaic. McCall and Gilleon have partnered on many projects for over a decade, and in the Pool Party the two worked with Artaic to produce highly original, visual delight in the crowd-pleasing pool.

When not designing flying pigs into mosaics, Tom Gilleon is best known as the master of color and composition, depicting time-honored Western themes in new and compelling ways. His evocative perceptions of reality feature bold, luminous color full of nuanced detail. After working as a NASA illustrator during the Apollo era, and as a Walt Disney Imagineering master painter starting with the company’s EPCOT theme park, Gilleon brings his cascading imagination and decades of experience to his large scale oil paintings, and especially to creative projects like the Fairfield by Marriott Fair Oaks Farms.

An endeavor in “Surruralism,” the name of the piece reflecting the surrealist take on ruralism, the work is described by Gilleon as the, “Star Wars cantina in the pasture, where of course pigs can fly,” and it is, indeed, a dreamlike scene depicting a manicured farm with apple trees, horses, and a Rodin-style thinker bull contemplating which came first, the chicken or the egg.

In order to recreate such a particular design as a mosaic, McCall and Gilleon turned to Artaic, a company with sophisticated software and advanced robotic technology that is capable of recreating existing imagery on tile. The result is a stunning 40 foot wide by 16 foot tall mosaic made of 300,000 pieces of beautiful 3/8 inch Vitreous Glass tile.

Like translating a novel into a screenplay, there are challenges in translating an original piece of art into a mosaic, as the mosaic form is intrinsically pixelated. Artaic designer Ashley Trap worked closely with Gilleon on each step of the translation, including choosing materials, emulating a brushstroke texture, balancing color composition, and creating the character of the featured animals. To do so, Trap and Gilleon used a vibrant palette of reds, yellows, and various greens, that would closely match the color and texture of the original artwork.

“The Fair Oaks Farms team specifically asked for ‘the sparkle of life’ in the animals’ eyes that the kids playing in the pool area would see” said Trap. “This partnership was so much fun. Color was VERY important to them, but what truly made our collaboration so productive was Tom’s embrace of the interpretation of his painting into a more simplified mosaic form. Tom’s keen sense of visual storytelling enabled him to change the artwork in small but important ways to better translate the visual narrative into the mosaic medium. The whole effort resulted in a style that we think of as ‘painterly pixelization’.”

The result is a high fidelity scene of public art (completely visible from the hotel’s main hallway), which resonates with hotel guests looking to escape to the country.

The hotel directly connects to Fair Oaks Farms’ 17,000 square foot Farmhouse Restaurant, Pub, and Conference Center, providing complete dining and meeting accommodations for guests. Fair Oaks Farms is an escape to the country for food and fun, and enrichment and entertainment, and it is the leading agritourism destination in the country. As seen in the Fairfield by Marriott Fair Oaks Farms, Artaic’s software offers artists a tool to transform their artwork into the mosaic medium—giving strategic and experiential placemakers such as Michael McCall, an innovative way to integrate long lasting, impactful, and site-specific artwork into their properties.