Desert Mosaic Progress

10 hours into it:

This has been a productive weekend - in the studio and out (the only thing I should have done that I didn't was finish the laundry).

I'm cutting some more stone right now. I'm getting faster at working with the hammer & hardie. I need to time cutting a 12" tile so that I can accurately account for the labor that goes into a mosaic.

Desert Mosaic Update

I've started laying in the tesserae on the first desert mosaic. It seems to be coming together well. My only worry is that I will need more variety of desert-colored stone. If there wasn't several inches of snow on the ground I'd go beach combing or climb up sugarloaf and gather some stone.

When I was cutting up some of the stone I had on hand I found one tile that was a deep rusty orange. It was only a 6 inch tile, but I got as much usable stone out of it that I could. I used almost half of it to do the large swath that you can see in the photo.

I may end up visiting some of the tile stores around here to see if I can find more desert colors.

Desert Mosaics

It seems that much of my art work is inspired by place these days - place, or the environment, the world around us.

Tonight I started working on a set of desert-inspired mosaics. I've done a good number of pieces that are about water and these next two or three will be about the lack of water. I spent a lot of our hike in the Mojave a couple weeks ago thinking about how I would represent a desert in a mosaic- not the Mojave, per se, but the idea of a desert...

Tonight's work was mostly selecting and cutting stone - sandstone, marble, slate and onyx (tans, browns, oranges, reds and grays) - and choosing glass (reds, oranges, blues, grays and black) that will blend well with the stone I have selected.

The small piles are individual sandstone rocks that I picked up in the Mojave. A couple of the rocks have a really cool layered coloring - I think it's from baking in the relentless sun out there. The outer surface of the rocks have a patina-like coloring that is very different from the inner parts.

Catching up

A few images of recent mosaics.

These two new mosaics are going to be in a multi-artist show at LaChica Art & Music in Las Vegas in February. The show theme is nature-inspired abstracts.

Red River, 12" x 12", glass, marble, slate, coal

Inkling – the Seed of an Idea, 8" x 17", Dalle de Verre mosaic, limestone & glass
two views - normal lighting and backlit

 Along with a old favorite

Tales from the River, 3.5": x 3.5 x 8.5, glass on driftwood

I have two additional shows coming up. One in April at the Page Performance Center, and a show with one other artist at LaChica in June. So I'm working in the studio every evening.

The Highest Good Is Like Water, 12" x 12", glass & marble.

I'm hoping to have at least 12 pieces for the April show and 15 for the June show.