150 years ago Snowbird, Utah was known for its silver mines.  Today, it is a top winter powder skiing and snowboarding resort. One major magnet, The Cliff Lodge and Spa, not only enjoys an outstanding location but also some progressive architectural and design treatments.

Featuring wall-to-wall windows with awe-inspiring mountain or canyon views, Cliff Lodge is modern, spacious and well equipped. The owners wanted some new indoor visuals to add extra brio and, as a result, the resort now boasts two very large mosaic murals.

“We wanted to bring the outdoors indoors,” says Kari Bennett, Interior Designer at Edge ID.  “There are so many beautiful vistas surrounding The Cliff Lodge. In particular, there are exquisite Aspen trees indigenous to this part of the country, which look good year-round. So we made the collective decision to create an amazing Aspen tree ‘wow factor’ motif on two large walls, one being in the ballroom lobby, and the other in the ballroom mezzanine. These were to be very large murals, each thirty feet wide by four feet high – 120 square feet – each consisting of over 166,000 individual vitreous glass mosaic pieces.

“We knew a bit about Artaic, and how the firm offered a unique, space-age service of creating mosaic murals using computer-driven robots.  Artaic provided us with its mosaic depiction of an Aspen tree motif.  We immediately liked it, but wanted to change the colour of the trees from black-grey to more of a sepia tone.  Artaic had no trouble accommodating our request.”

“We were provided with a photograph of a stand of aspen trees,” explains Artaic’s  Dr Ted Acworth.  “We loaded that image into our proprietary design software, and subsequently created a beautiful custom mural out of glass tile using that image.”

The murals were installed by Rod Katwyk of Katwyk Tile using Bostik materials, including Dimension RapidCure Grout, GoldPlus crack isolation and Glass-Mate polymer-modified adhesive.

“Along with Artaic, our strategic partner, Bostik is on a mission to resurrect the ancient art of mosaic design,” says Scott Banda, Bostik’s Director of Marketing and Business Development.  “We’re bringing it back world-wide. The two murals at The Cliff Lodge and Spa are perfect examples of how mosaic masterpieces can once again be specified by the A&D community.”

A new post by Joe Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, March 2017.