The blue piece in the corner

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching a community mosaic being assembled on a workshop table.

On the table, the mosaic was still a set of neighbouring decisions. A yellow curve ended beside a tray of blue pieces. Dark green squares waited in a saucer. At the centre, a white bird had acquired a head but no convincing direction in which to fly.

The group was making a panel for the entrance to its shared workshop. On the wall behind them hung a drawing of the intended design. From the doorway, the drawing looked finished and the table looked confused. Moving closer reversed some of that certainty. The drawing’s smooth blue area became a collection of differently shaded pieces, each capable of changing the colour beside it.

One woman lifted a pale fragment towards the corner. A man opposite her said it would draw the eye away from the bird. She held it there while he came round the table. From her position, the blue continued a line which had been difficult to see from his. They did not settle the matter by counting votes. He moved another piece, she lowered the fragment, and the corner changed in a way neither had first proposed.

At the end of the afternoon, the bird had found its direction. Its body was assembled from fragments which were not the same white. Up close, one contained a faint grey mark. From a few steps away, the differences gave the shape a surface which seemed less flat than the original drawing.

The group covered the unfinished edges before leaving. Around the completed centre, shallow trays still held green squares, yellow curves and blue possibilities. The panel had begun to become one image, but the table kept a record of how many small separate choices that unity required.

How does the writer present the making of the mosaic as a collaborative process?