I’m going to take a bit of a detour from photo mosaics for a moment to talk about a really unique mosaic artist. Kevin Champeny is a New York artist whose work straddles a variety of artistic mediums to create large, mosaic-esque sculptures. However, in contrast to the traditional style of mosaic creation, using existing items to create a larger image or object, the smaller pieces of the mosaic are handmade by Champeny.

Champeny creates a mold for each different piece, then casts tens of thousands of polyurethane pieces that will comprise the larger piece. How he chooses the smaller designs is beyond me, however I will say that there is something special about a massive skull made of small flowers. The entire creation process can run the course of several months. It’s fascinating to find an artist using the most mundane and heavily manufactured items (candy, matchsticks, etc.) to create highly detailed works of art. For instance, the rose sculpture was created using 15,000 resin candies, while the skull used more than 35,000 handmade flowers. Check out Champeny’s tumblr for more mosaics as well as other wild works of art.

h/t:Colossal