Einstein said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe, but we can assume that playful and anarchic surrealist Salvador Dali did. Ditto his portraitist, 25-year-old Santa Rosa artist Mauricio Jojoa, who just took top honors in Sonoma County Fair’s Fine Arts competition for his image made entirely of dice. The work won First Place and “Best of Show” in the Adult Fine Arts department.
Originally from Colombia, Jojoa specializes in tattoo and street art. His winning Dali portrait was his first time using dice. That said, he also recently made a painting from corks that he cut and painted by hand. With so many mediums at one’s disposal, why choose?
“Before thinking about Dali’s work of dice, I was thinking about how to build an image made of dots. I tried pointillism with white marker, scratching paper, Notan art, but none of them would impress anyone,” says Jojoa. “At first I thought about dominoes, but doing some sketches didn’t work.”
Then, while watching his parents play a game with dice in his home country of Colombia, the idea came to him. Some computer experimentation followed, which convinced Jojoa the project was feasible. He ordered 8,000 dice from China (where he could obtain them inexpensively) and waited two months for them to arrive before commencing the project.
“The process at first was very risky because when you do something so big you spend a lot of money and you don’t know if it will turn out well,” says Jojoa, who spent an additional two months composing the piece using his computer model as a guide.
“The image of Salvador Dali that I made in the painting is the image that I use whenever I am going to start a project that I am not sure is going to work. I know the photo very well. I have tattooed it; I have sculpted it. I have painted it a thousand times, and I feel very comfortable working with his face,” says Jojoa, who is a fan of Dali’s paintings, including “The Temptation of St. Anthony” and “Portrait of My Dead Brother,” which is similarly composed of dots and a direct inspiration.
“Since I was little, I have loved art—it is the first time that I will say that I love to work,” he says. “I dedicate 100% of my heart to it… This is the first time I have won something.”
Learn more at instagram.com/Mauricio541854.
