
My first piece show here is Mario's face in a 6x4 custom made wood and lexxan frame. I was pretty happy with it but I learned a few things I wanted to improve. So I went back on ebay and got a bunch of Gretzky cards for my second piece. This time I made it a little smaller (so it would fit in my car) and had it framed. I also chose to only use portrait cards and didn't rotate them. I floated the Mario piece on eBay and even though there were a lot of coments, my mother is the only one that bid the minimum. These 2 pieces then sat in my office and garage for over a decade before I got back into making hockey cards art. I was working on a Brodeur piece before he retired, but got too distracted to complete it. However, I started experimenting more with using an unlimited amount of the pictures I've taken from the cards.
A bit later I bought a pile of Oveschkin cards and created a few pieces using both the front and back of the card's images. I made a giant Ovesckin poster composed of more than four thousand tiles and held a drawing. Then hockey stopped because of the pandemic.
Just before the Stanley Cup Playoff of the shortned 2020-21 season I bought 88 cards of Carey Price and went to work creating again. But this time I learned that I didn't even need to buy the cards anymore to create pieces of any player I wanted, and just had a lot of fun creating this gallery, and the pieces in the store.
I got my 20"X32" Chris Nilan portrait signed by Chris Nilan himself! And he agreed to do it at the condition that I send him a copy for him to keep. I thought that was awesome. I love Nilan, he always played with such heart. Carbonneau-Gainey-Nilan was one of the best shut-down line in the NHL for over half a decade.
Also, he's the first player to see his own 'hockey mosaic' portrait (and I was told he found it cool and well done!)
It makes me happy every time I look at it now.
The NHL social media section became my first client, featuring my work for the return of Joe Thorton to the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs.
I hope one day I get to create a giant mosaic in an arena, that would be real fun. Until then I will just keep exploring and making more hockey cards art.