For many years Harby's Pizza and Deli in the Fountain City area of Knoxville, Tennessee, has been known for its generously cheesy pizzas, foot-long subs, and homemade desserts like baklava. Now people are showing up not just to eat, but to get a peak at the restrooms.

Both the women's and the men's rooms at Harby's are decorated in an eclectic mosaic of found objects, mirror pieces, and cut tiles created by mosaic artist and stone mason Andy Whitaker.

"Andy is a master," said Al Harb, owner of Harby's. "His designs are truly amazing - more amazing than a photo can really show."

The women's room at the restaurant started with a ceramic fountain of a Celtic lady on a horse, which Harb already owned. With the fountain as a centerpiece, Whitaker added broken pieces of china and glass, smooth stones, small children's toys, and shapes he cut out of tile.

"I cut a hundred or so trees in the cedar shape for that job, and added all kinds of things - an owl, a raccoon, a chicken, a panther. It's a great place to play 'I Spy'," he said.

Whitaker's work can be seen in several homes and businesses in east Tennessee, but also as far away as California. Some of the work is subtle, such as the bird silhouettes, angels, and flowers inlaid into the brick building that houses Harby's and other businesses. These images blend with the surrounding wall, suggesting a faint presence of the natural world in an otherwise urban setting.

Other creations by Whitaker are not at all subtle, such as the elaborate courtyard and mosaic fountain behind Harb's residence, located just a few blocks from the restaurant. Harb was so taken with Whitaker's work, he asked him to create a sanctuary behind his house. A year and a half later, Harb had his sanctuary, though no one would guess what's hidden behind the unassuming house on the tree-lined neighborhood street. Cloistered within the walls that surround the backyard is a whimsical collection of birds, dogwood flowers, trees, and fish, all inlaid in stone. There's a large stone fountain surrounded by mosaics and glass blocks with lights behind, several stone arches and benches, a mosaic patio with an inlaid dolphin, a mosaic of a tree, cobblestone walkways, and steps inlaid with pink marble and dark granite.

"You would never guess this was back here, would you?" said Terry Nell Morris, who works with Whitaker on some of his projects. "It's like another world."

Whitaker's journey to becoming a folk artist in stone and found objects is also a bit of a mosaic. He enjoyed art while in school but didn't pursue art as a career. Instead he salvaged things - old tiles, scrap metal, bottles, pieces of china, bricks, stone. He worked with a friend hauling away debris from demolition sites of old buildings, seeing beauty and history in many of the items, where others only saw trash. He also worked with his brother laying stone.

"I've got a background in masonry," he said. "I'm not a true mason; my brother was a journeyman mason. We used to work for a topnotch masonry company working on arches and things like that in a lot of the buildings in the area, so basically I learned a lot of techniques from that."

Whitaker worked on many demolition, salvage, and construction projects. He also worked with a friend who installed granite countertops.

Tile artist and mason Andy Whitaker finds the beauty in everyday cast-off objects like old bricks, stone fragments and broken tile, and incorporates them into new works of subtle beauty and whimsical humor.

That job taught him how to work with granite, one of his favorite elements to use. Of course he likes the shiniest, most colorful granite the best.

"The more exotic the better," he said.

He began combining some of his found objects with the stone he was laying, often practicing in his own yard - walls, benches, archways, stepping stones. People noticed his work, and word about his designs began to spread.

One of Whitaker's hobbies is contra dancing - a type of folk dancing he does at the Laurel Theater in Knoxville almost every week. He's well known as the "mosaic guy" at these dances, and through them he met a woman from California who was interested in his work. When she saw it in person, she fell in love with it and wanted him to come out to California to create a courtyard for her. He spent a good part of the next year and a half working at her home on the serpentine walls, walkway, and entranceway. One of his favorites from that job was a mosaic dragonfly designed out of exotic river rock.

"What inspired the dragonfly was the stone they had. It was a cranberry colored stone. I knew if I split it I'd have two identical parts for the wings."

That's generally how Whitaker works. Sometimes he draws out a template of a design he's going to create. But more often he works in an open-ended way, letting the design be determined by the found pieces he's using.

"The material determines what I'm going to do," he said. "I use old materials, gathered materials. They tell you what they want you to make."

Other projects include a large, white marble sunburst in an outside patio, large lanternor candle-holders made out of stone, curving walls with built-in benches and plant holders, circular windows surrounded by found objects- all of the designs emphasizing organic curves and very few straight lines.

Left and inset: A green marble crane, from a courtyard wall at Al Harb's home in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a white marble crane from the built-in seating to the left of the courtyard fountain (see cover). Andy enlarges a realistic silhouette for his inlays, which he transfers to the surface and carefully cuts away just enough to hold the pattern and a mortar outline. The inlay pieces are trimmed out freehand with a variety of tools. "I like a turbo edge for the blade, and I do all dry cutting," he said. At the time of this interview, Andy had just started using a Bosch grinder featuring a rear air intake. "So far, its worked really well, and should last a lot longer with all the brick dust."

Whitaker usually works on his own with no apprentice, meaning his designs take time to create. And all that cutting for the mosaics means he goes through a lot of saw blades.

"I like a turbo edge for the blade, and I do all dry cutting," he said. "I don't use the wet cut because I don't do many straight cuts - I'm pretty nonlinear. I try to make everything as neat and tight as I can, but I like to give myself some leeway in the design."

Because Whitaker has helped with the demolition and renovation of many historical buildings and sites, he's knowledgeable about local history, especially in the Fountain City area where he grew up. He has a lot of souvenirs from these historical places, too, even if a lot of them are broken. Some of the pieces he's gathered and some have been given to him, since he's developed a reputation as a collector.

This is one of the things Whitaker likes best about his designs - they tell a story. He may actually know the story behind the objects he uses - a piece of marble that came from a historical mansion's staircase or a brick pulled up from an old cobblestone road or a piece of metal from the Civil War. Or he might just guess the significance of the found pieces he puts in his mosaics. Either way, a story is there, and his designs are truly one of a kind.

Visit Andy Whitaker's web site for a glimpse of more of his work, at www.ecouniquity.com

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