21 October 2009

Upcoming Mosaics

Aside from the ship mosaic I have two other mosaics in the works. One will be made from glass I have gathered from the riverbanks of the Mississippi. This river-tumbled glass is limited in color palette of mostly clear that has been scratched up so much it is nearly white, a pale, pale green, two other shades of green, a couple shades of brown, and the odd red or blue piece. Much of it seems to come from old beer, wine or other beverage bottles that have been tossed into the river somewhere upstream from here. It gets tumbled with the rocks in the river by the current and wave action, giving each piece a softened look. I'm not sure if this mosaic will be a representational piece showing some recognizable imagery, or if I will do something abstract. I need to go beach-combing a couple more times to see what glass I find. Hopefully the river will be down a bit and more shoreline will be exposed. It takes a long time to gather enough glass for a mosaic from the bits and pieces the river gives me, so this will likely be a small mosaic, no bigger than one square foot.

The other mosaic will be a 1' x 3' mosaic of a rather earthy smiling Chinese dragon. I am doing this one with smalti. I just ordered about $400 worth of Mexican smalti from smalti.com. That's not all that much smalti - around 15 pounds or probably just enough to cover 4 or 5 square feet.

2 comments:

Madison said...

Wow I stumbled across your page after I pondered why there were no photographs of the mural in Damen Hall. I am a student of molecular biology at Loyola and I find lines between science and art blur. I will be keeping up with your mosaic projects because these are fantastic!

Unknown said...

I don't know if you're following this post Madison (and therefore would know that I've replied to your comment), but thanks for the comment on my mosaic work.

I am rather heartsick that the mosaic in Damen Hall may end up destroyed. If you know of any plans to save it please let me know.

It was instrumental in my decision to become a mosaic artist. I've driven to Chicago with seeing it again as part of my plans - it would not be reasonable to make the drive just to see it, but whenever I go to Chicago I work in some time to simply stand in front of it and absorb the color, detail, precision, and the wonderful enormity of it.