Catching up on the mosaic progress

Thought I'd take a few minutes while I eat my lunch to get this blog caught up. I've finished the glass work on MacKenzie in the Garden with Bees. I also made a grout test - a 10" x 20" mosaic using tiles that represent the color range in this piece. Tonight it will have been sitting log enough for the adhesive to be dry. I will tape off parts of it and do grout color test strips. I think I will want to test blue-gray, light gray, medium gray and black.


On previous mosaics I've often skipped the grout test, but I've devoted enough time, energy and resources into this one I thought I would do it. I'm really bad about just doing things without this kind of prep. Most of the time it works out because I am good at visualizing. Sometimes I wonder if a test of this sort would have made a good piece even better. So with that in mind I'm taking the time (and committing the resources - 161 tiles) to do one.

When I was doing a lot of B&W photography I actually learned that I really liked making test strips for exposure settings. I would cut strips of glossy, matte and pearl finished papers; line them up in the print easel, and do a series of test exposures. It became part of my darkroom ritual - shoot a roll of film, process it; expose a contact sheet, process it, dry it; take it out into normal lighting and select which images to print; cut test strips, expose them, process them, dry them; take them out into normal lighting and finally decide which images and which papers and which exposures; expose images, process them, dry them, take them out into normal lighting and see how well I chose. If not so good, repeat process with other choices. If good, frame photograph (or whatever I was doing with it) and move on.

Mosaic Progress - Getting Close

Here is the most recent image of MacKenzie in the Garden with Bees. I will likely finish the glass work between now and Sunday. I have a bit of work to do on the edges, particularly the left edge, that doesn't show in this photograph. It needs to be trimmed about 1/4" so that it will fit in a 24" X 48" frame. I have to pull up about 25 tiles, shave off the 1/4", and replace the tiles, some of which will need trimmed themselves.

Next time I'm going to cut the substrate and build the frame before I start with the glass work. I won't place the substrate in the frame until after the grouting so that I don't have to worry about getting grout where it should not be - I just want to make sure I don't have framing issues like this one.

Mosaic Progress - Part 9

Tonight's work was cut short by an hour or so. My right thumb met the corner of a particularly sharp cut tile. I did not even know it was cut until the blood spurted.

I did get some work done first.

I should be able to finish the glass work this week. After that it will be grouting and framing. I think I'll make a shallow shadowbox frame this one.

Mosaic Progress - Part 8

I spent most of the weekend cleaning and organizing the house. I did manage to get some more work on the mosaic done. I will need to get some more cutting wheels for my Leponitt tile nipper soon. I think they are beginning to get dull - it was getting hard to make accurate cuts, harder to cut the tiles straight. I rotated the blades this morning and they seemed to cut better this evening when I worked on the mosaic.

Mosaic Progress - Part 5

It's almost midnight. I had no idea I had worked so long tonight. I was listening to an audio book and laying in tiles and time slipped away from me.

Mosaic Progress - Part 4

Here is MacKenzie in the Garden with Bees as of last night.

 

 

It's always interesting to see which areas of a mosaic I feel drawn to work on. If I were doing a mosaic in opus regulatum I would pick a corner and work row-by-row; if opus vermiculum I would select an element in the image and work it first and then move outward; but this one is sort of opus palladium - crazy path - and I can jump around in it a bit.

Mosaic Progress - Part 3

Came home 90 minutes early today - well, now it's yesterday - worn out from fighting to breathe all day. Slept for a few hours and was wide awake. I still am.

Decided to clean house and work on the mosaic. Tonight's work:

And the entire work (so you can see how far I have to go yet...):

Mosaic Progress - Part 2

Last night's work:

Mosaic Project

I have started another Mosaic - MacKenzie in the Garden with Bees. I am using a 24" x 48" piece of tile backer board. Here is the drawing on the board, the guidelines for the piece. I follow the lines more or less. It just depends on how the tessarae go down.

I've started attaching tiles and stained glass and will post some more photos in the coming days as the piece progresses.

MacKenzie Died

                                                      Photo by Gareth

It is s sad, sad morning. I just found a phone message on my cellphone about MacKenzie. I hate the way that messages sometimes do not show up until days after they come in.

On June 3rd a gentleman called and left this message: "I am calling about your orange cat. I thought you would want to know that I found him in my yard dead a couple days ago."

This means MacKenzie died the night he got out. All the hope that he would come home has been false hope. That hurts. All the late night searching, barefoot, in pajamas, after hearing a cat outside the window, was in vain. Mac will not be coming home.

It also hurts me that since I did not find the message on my phone for over two weeks, that his body is gone and I cannot hold him one more time and bury him beside Kai. I really, really do not want to know where his body went.

I hope it was not the garbage. I so hope it wasn't.

Mackenzie Missing

                                                      Photo by Gareth

We have had a cat go missing. His name is MacKenzie and he's an orange tabby. I cannot believe he is gone. He got out the night of Princess' wedding. He's not been home since June 1st.

He was the really friendly one. If you caught him looking at you and you patted your chest he would leap into your arms and wrap his front paws around your neck and snuggle his face against yours.

He loved going outside and escaped as often as he could. But he always reappeared on either the front or back porch within hours (or less if it was raining - he hated the rain).

We put up signs in the neighborhood. We've been to the Humane Society.

I could stand it if I thought he'd just taken up with another family. The thing that makes me heartsick is the possibility that Mac ended up going into someone's shed or garage and got locked in there and died.

I wake up at night thinking I hear him crying.