Remembering Jude

Jude was clever, kind, stubborn, generous, opinionated, gentle, loving, smart, beautiful... She laughed a lot at herself and rarely at others. She took in strays (animals and people) and loved them unconditionally.

We tell ourselves we are here because we loved Jude. We are really here because Jude loved us. Whoever Jude loved was her family and family was everything that made life good and worthwhile. So, all of you who loved Jude, and all of you who were loved by Jude, are family.

Everyone in this room has lost a grandmother, a mother, an aunt, a sister, a daughter.

It's hard to lose your grand-mama, especially when you haven't really gotten the chance to know her. Grand-mamas are so important to little boys - they keep them honest, they keep them happy, they teach them love, unconditional love. They teach them that the world existed before they came along, but the world is so much richer now that they are here. All of us have to help keep Jude's story alive for Malachi, so that even though his first-hand memories of Jude fade, his knowledge of her, and his love for her does not. And perhaps more importantly, making sure that her love for him does not fade from this world.

 It's hard to lose your mother, especially a mother who loves you as deeply and as truly as Jude loves you. I can tell you Zaviara, that from the moment she knew you were coming, you filled her heart with joy, and her entire being with hope and love. Never doubt that you meant everything to her, that you were her pride, her treasure, her great gift to all of us. We are so lucky that we have you. We love you.

It’s hard to lose your aunt. Aunties can be like a big sister, guiding you, keeping you in line while inspiring you to see yourself as better than you think you are. They love you without reserve. They protect you from the world. They can get you thinking new ideas and doing new things. They can inspire you and stay connected with you during that time in life when you know for certain that all adults are stupid… your aunt is rarely stupid in your eyes, and never far from your heart.

It's hard to lose your sister. Who loves you more than your sister? Who drives you crazier than your sister? Who's got your back more than your sister? Who is more proud of you than your sister? When you are right with your sister, there's nothing that can defeat the two of you. And man, Jude was a powerful sister. All of you, all of Jude's sisters and brothers by blood and by love's choice, you are some of the most fortunate siblings in the world. You get to keep her faith in love alive.

 It's hard to lose a daughter. I didn't give birth to Jude, but she was my daughter, and I was her mom... one of them – extended, blended, complicated families are like that. Many of us in this room spent years raising our children together, sharing the responsibility of their care and nurturing. Watching them grow into splendid adults with families of their own. Our children are our legacy, our dreams for the future, but it's more than that. Our children are our truest expression of love and faith and hope for the world and they should not leave this earth before we do. It's not supposed to happen that way. But it has. We've lost our daughter. Our hearts are broken and our souls riven. All we can do at this time is hold out our arms to each other in love and help one another try to heal.

 Jude came to Minnesota for a few months last year. I was happy to see her and to get to know her again. I learned anew how amazingly aware of the world she was, how beautifully she saw things, how fully she lived. She brought Zavy and Malachi up to visit for a while, giving us the pleasure of their company, sharing them with us, making them a part of our lives.

 I now recognize that brief time as the sublime gift that it was.

 Jude never left my presence without giving me her biggest smile and telling me she loved me. I’ve made a promise to myself that, moving forward, I will be sure to say "I love you" to those I care for, as often as possible, in honor of our beautiful Jude.

Jude's memorial service

is at 3pm (EST) on Monday. If it's possible, please think of her - and us, her large family - for a few moments at that time, with love for each other and hope for the world.

Things like this aren't supposed to happen

I'm having trouble breathing past the tightness and the pain. Jude is dead. Now my family has a Jude-sized hole in it. And it really hurts.

Tomorrow is her birthday. She would be 37.

Your children are supposed to live much longer than you.

I didn't give birth to Jude, but she was my daughter... extended families are like that. The strange, difficult combinations and permutations can give us lovely connections that would not have happened otherwise. The pain of the relationships that don't quite work is sometimes offset by the joy that an extra son or daughter or sister or brother brings.

Oh, Jude was clever, kind, stubborn, generous, opinionated, gentle, loving, smart, beautiful... She laughed a lot at herself and rarely at others. She took in strays (animals and people) and loved them unconditionally. Family was everything for her.

She loved her husband. And I believe that he loved her too, but he also hurt her a lot. She came up to Minnesota last year to get away from him. She told me she felt really good with the decision to leave, that she loved him immensely, but couldn't handle the the violence. It seemed like she was in a good place about it all. She hoped to find a job and stay up here.

The job didn't quickly materialize. And I think he started calling her, making promises. He must have convinced her that it really was going to be different. Maybe he said he'd get therapy, seek counseling... I don't know. Jude didn't tell me and after she went back our conversations were mostly Facebook posts - short, funny, trivial... I didn't want her to feel like I would criticize her for a decision I might also have made if I were in her situation...

I guess I'll never understand why anyone would ever hurt someone they loved.

Today we found out that they are dead. We think that sometime this week he killed her and then killed himself.

I really, really cannot believe this happened. Oh, fuck, it hurts. It hurts.
What I really want to do right now is gather everyone close and take care of them, protect them.

Jude - I love you. I can't stand it that he took you away from us.

Mosaic Process - Working With Stone

I've had a few people ask about my process for working with stone in mosaics recently.

Creating a mosaic with stone differs from other mosaic work mostly in the way that you cut the tesserae.

How I do it:

Disclaimer - I am not an expert, yet. I'm just telling you what works for me.

Most of the stone I use starts out as floor tiles. They run from 7/16" to 5/8" thick and are usually 12" x 12" in size. Sometimes I'll get the smaller ones, but there is more waste per piece with them since I trim off all the outer smooth-cut edges.

Top to bottom: 3 shelves of cut stone tesserae,
uncut stone tiles & slabs, bins of cut-up chunks

I cut the tile into manageable chunks - trying to get the chunks as rectangular as possible - with a hammer and hardie. I don't like manufactured edges to show in my mosaics, so I cut the stone to the point where the tessera has the "footprint" that I want and then I turn it sideways and cut it in half. This allows me to turn all the manufactured edges down and have only the hand-cut, irregular edges showing.

Hammers & Hardies, left - steel hammer & hardie for cutting stone,
right - carbide-tipped hamnmers and hardie for cutting glass

Stone cutting process - note the progressively smaller cuts. The two
small pieces on the top of the stack are ready for use in a mosaic.

You want to develop enough control that the force of the hammer-fall is transmitted just to the stone. There are two methods of swinging the hammer: to pivot at the elbow joint, or to pivot at the wrist. I try to isolate the pivot in my elbow joint. I find that it saves my wrist from the shock (important since I have some joint issues from earlier injuries). It also feels like I have more control and I don't fatigue so quickly.

When you're using a hammer and hardie it's important to avoid striking the hardie with the hammer as much as possible. It really dulls both the hardie and the hammer when it happens. I get the best cuts when I focus on making sure that I strike the stone exactly above where it rests on the hardie - so that the hammer tip is directly above the cutting edge of the hardie.

If I'm working with a very crumbly stone (soft limestone/sandstone) or stone that is prone to irregular cuts (heavily veined marble), I'll cut the tessarae using the hammer & hardie down to a certain size and then use my compound tile nippers or a CHEAP pair of glass tile nippers - not my Leponitts or my Montolits - to make the final cut. I have to admit that feels a bit like cheating... but I don't like wasting material and time.

I usually mix stone and glass in the mosaics. I like the rough stone and the smooth and shiny glass side-by-side. I also like the contrast between the subtle, muted colors of the stone and the more intense, pure colors of the glass.

Dalle de verre and found glass

The glass is usually dalle de verre with some smalti and the occasional weird found glass.  The dalle de verre is cut using carbide-tipped hammer and the hardie. I also use a chipping hammer to distress the surface of any larger blocks of glass and also to create shards to use in the mosaics.

Carbide-tipped hammers and hardie. Top: chipping hammer. Bottom: cutting hammer

Cutting dalles.

The carbide tips are more brittle than the steel surrounding them. It is important to always strike the glass with the hammer lined up straight with the hardie just in case you pass all the way through the glass and strike the hardie.

This is what happens when your carbide hammer strikes the hardie unevenly.

The chipping hammer isn't used with the hardie. The cut piece of dalle de verre is laid on its side and you strike it with the hammer at an angle, trying to catch just the edge of the piece of glass. This process takes off the manufactured, flat surface and creates a more visually interesting piece of glass.

The top of the smaller piece of dalle de verre has been distressed using the chipping hammer.

I use mostly Wediboard for substrate. For the stone mosaics I use the 5/8" instead of the 1/2", mainly because of the finished weight. I have a local (well, within 150 miles) supplier for the wediboard, Cole Papers in Minneapolis. They don't list wediboard on their website, but they do sell it.

I use thinset mortar to adhere the stone and glass to the Wediboard. I've been using Mapei Keraset mortar, mixed with a 1:1 mixture of water and Mapei Keraply. I'd use Laticrete products, but I can purchase the Mapei products locally.

I color the mortar with Gamblin dry pigments or Sheffield Tints-All. Lately I've been mostly using the Gamblin but I stay away from the cadmium, chromium and cobalt pigments. I don't have a safe ventilation system for using them.

Desert Mosaic Update

I've finished the desert mosaic.

Desert One, 11" x 17", Marble, Limestone, Sandstone, Glass

I still need to frame it. I usually do a very minimalistic frame, usually a small strip of oak that I paint with satin black acrylic.

Photo Inspiration

Desert Mosaic Update

Spent the last few nights working on the desert mosaic. I think I will get it finished tomorrow.

At 14 hours

At 18 hours

At 22 hours

I tipped it upright for this last photo so that the texture was more apparent. This is mostly marble, with some onyx, limestone, sandstone and glass shards.

Be sure to click on the images and view them in a larger format.

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.

Testing Slide Notes

Abelisto showed me a new app for creating lists and notes. You can share the notes in a number of ways, including posting to Blogger. So this is my test using Slide notes to create and upload a post.

The River Mosaic

I've been working on the river mosaic the last few evenings and I've reached a point where I thought I'd share a few photos of it.

The River Mosaic, 12" x 60", Emperador Medium marble, Smalt, Dalle de Verre.

One of the contiguous marble sections is completed. There's a bit of the glass started - I did that on the night that the Winona Daily News photographer came over to take photos for the story they ran on the front page of the paper last week.

I've been playing with varying heights of tesserae and interfering with the andamento...

Table-level view from the right end of the piece

Table-level view from the left end of the piece

I'm going to take a short break from working on this one to do two small mosaics.

Christmas Tanks

This caught my eye when we were in Linton (IN) visiting family for Thanksgiving - or maybe that's Tanksgiving...

A tank with Christmas lights - even Christmas-light flames coming out
of the tank's gun barrel.

It seemed a strange, surreal, mixed message to me.  Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All and tanks...

The Dalles Arrived!

After several calls to Kokomo Glass, I finally managed to get some dalle de verre ordered -- probably way too much dalle de verre for my budget, but what the hell...

They came today. Lots of blues & greens, some nice blue-greens, a couple amber-browns, a yellow, a blue-streaked clear, two nice purples and a deep red circle dalle.

A photographer for the newspaper came by tonight to take some photos for a story about me that will be in the paper soon. He wanted action shots, so I cut some marble, some smalti and some of the dalles up.

I had a pretty good mixture of cut glass (smalti & dalles) that I thought I would mix a bit of blue thinset and did some work on the river piece so that he could photograph that too.

Normally I'd have cut a lot more glass before starting this, but it seemed like a good idea for the photographer to get some photos of this part of the work too.

Now that I've got the glass I needed I can work  on this mosaic in earnest.

New Mosaic Project

This is an experiment. I've taken this photo with my new phone and creating this post with it too.
I won't be writing lengthy posts this way, but if it works well I'll probably use it now and then

The River Mosaic

After going through all the stone I have in the studio I've picked out what I'm going to use for the next mosaic - Emperador Medium (of course when it's cut up into tiny cubes it won't look anything like that photo). I have a 5 sq. ft. slab of it that's 1.25" thick. I just need to cut a BUNCH of it up into 3-5mm cubes... Good thing I have some big hammers.

I know what glass I'm using. Dalle de Verre - in Blues & Greens. Tomorrow I'm ordering 4 or 5 slabs (and a Blenko hammer).

I'm thinking about also incorporating some stones from the river. Don't know for sure, though - I don't want to put too much in... Sometimes I cross the line between making something really interesting and going too far with the interesting bit...

I do have some absolutely perfect river stones though - lots of them, in fact.I wonder if I have any brown ones that would look good with the Emperador Medium...

If not, I could get enthusiastic about doing some beach combing. Haven't been to Hoc-Si-La Park in quite a while...

Encouraging an art-filled life

A friend asked me about art opportunities for her son (who spent his morning making masks)... and I said:

There are some venues around here that offer art opportunities. We can talk about them sometime. But I want to say that while it is grand to get kids together to make art, I think it's more important to make sure that the creative creature that lives inside of each of us has a chance. Parents are the best incubators for that creative creature.

I think that the critical thing is to encourage constant experimentation... making art is experimentation - pure, wonderful, exasperating, beautiful experimentation - it's giving in to the urge to "what if..." something, to take a bit of this and a bit of that and put them together to make a new thing. It doesn't have to be limited to traditional art activities - building a snow fort or baking a pie or making some contraption can be experimental - and if it is, you're feeding the creative creature.

The most important thing for raising a child (or an adult) to live an art-filled life - to be blessed with the indescribable lightness of being that art generates - is to be willing to totally wreck havoc in the name of experimentation, to be willing to put the journey and the finding out ahead of things like order and propriety and everything else that shuts down the creative mind, that forces us to be those cogs in the machine.

I was very lucky as a child - my parents did not have much, but they let us play with almost everything they had. The contraptions we made were applauded and treasured - even when they had to be scraped off the sidewalk, or painted over, or dismantled so that dinner could be put on the table, or, or, or...

I was "sewing" before I started school, "building" before I was out of grade school... I learned how to use tools, how to make stuff from bits of this and that, how to fix things, how to "see" what might be, how to be fearless in my experimentation - to know "I can do that..." whatever "that" was.

And all because I was taught that the creative creature was important, that it was the most important part of me - the part that made me alive - the creative creature was me. Life was all about the making and thinking and looking and finding... All those doings done, all those thoughts thought, they stayed with me throughout my life. Even in the times when I was too afraid to make art, when life demanded too much of me to be able to spare the energy, I still was art-filled.

And one day I came back to it.

So, would I like to make my living making art? Hell yes. I'd love to... and I am really stubborn, so maybe it will happen.

But it's ever so much more important to just be making the art.

Not a simple issue

Refused and Confused - New York Times, Oct 05, 2011 - Linda Greenhouse

Off the cuff I think that people who use their religion/other positions to refuse service to others should give up the employment that asks them to serve the public.

But do I think that way because the services being discussed in the article are ones I believe should be available... or because it is sound policy to require any legally available service to be provided no matter what the personal beliefs of the providing individual? I'm trying to think of services that I might find distasteful or morally wrong and see how I feel about this from the other side...

I need a philosopher to toss this around with. In lieu of one showing up at my door here's what I'm thinking...

The crux of the matter - either:

• employees are forced to provide services they abhor to the public at large, or to specific groups of people,

          OR

• employees get to pick and choose what services they will provide and/or to whom...

Does it violate a person's civil rights to force them to perform a service, or make a service available, if they feel it is a morally wrong thing to do?

Does it violate an individual's civil rights to have a government/agency employee deny them a legal service because the employee feels, a.) it is morally wrong that anyone receive the service (e.g. birth control, abortion), or b.) that the person is morally wrong for asking for the service (e.g. marriage licenses for same-sex couples, police protection for abortion doctors/clinics)?

Honestly, even if it is questionable (in regard to civil rights) to ask an employee to provide a service they feel is morally wrong, I cannot think of a situation where an individual's rights would trump the rights of a person seeking a legally provided service. But that might be a slippery slope of another sort...

When this kind of news story appears I end up feeling that too many people brandish their beliefs at the rest of us without actually living according to them. If you believe that same-sex marriage is morally wrong, it's not living your beliefs to deny a marriage license to a same-sex couple. Living your beliefs - following your moral code - would be quitting your job if it required you to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

That's how it plays out inside my head anyway.

The Beelandia Mosaic

Is mostly finished. All I have to do is add the hardware for hanging it out on the fence. It probably won't go out until next spring, so there's no rush.

Beelandia Apiary, 12" x 24", stained glass, smalti, glass rod.

There's a bit of reflection on the left half... It is actually very evenly colored and the right half is more representational of the colors.

The Wall - Waiting for the Extraordinary Things

I made a small mosaic the other day for a friend. It was her 60th birthday.

At the party someone asked me about soul-mates... inferring that I had said at a previous party that I believe in them. This is an old topic at the parties, and for some strange reason, a bit controversial...

So, rather than get back into the topic (it was too early in the evening and not enough alcohol had been consumed to make the discussion interesting - consumed by others since I don't do alcohol - a whole 'nother story there...) I simply said "I believe that just about anything is possible." "Wise answer," my questioner replied. Luckily, before she could keep on about soul-mates, one of the others at the party quoted Alicia from the movie A Beautiful Mind - "I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible."

The birthday friend, who is very much concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict said, "Extraordinary things are not possible..." She can't see how a peaceful resolution can happen.

I admit that my response to her comment and the situation is more emotional than informed - which is often the case for me; the feelings get in the way of the thinking sometimes. And even when I try to think critically about the issues I often feel like many of the world's problems are insurmountable (and so why should any of us try?)...

But I've decided that I'm not going to quit thinking about them and talking about them and trying to learn about them.

And I'm not about to stop making art about them...

It was strange because when I made this mosaic I had no idea why I made it like it is.

The Wall, 4" x 8", marble, recycled glass.

I loved the materials when I placed them side-by-side on the worktable. The cream-colored marble has a slight orange veining in it and somehow feels both smooth and gritty at the same time. The background is Rain Forest Green marble (because of how it looks, not that it comes from a rain forest). And the red is a recycled, tumbled, landscape glass that I've cut into sharp slivers. They looked beautiful together - until I started cementing them down... then they made me a bit uncomfortable.

Once I finished the white line I realized that it was "the wall." And the red represents the bloodshed on both sides.

It could be any wall, any division between people that results in bloodshed and tragedy.

For my friend this was about the Middle-east conflict. I think she (like me) loves this piece but finds it hard to look at/think about.

And the extraordinary things - I do believe that they are possible, but we don't get to pick and choose which extraordinary thing is going to happen. We cannot force things to turn out according to what we think is best, how we would fix the problems. We have to learn to recognize when something extraordinary is looking us right in the face. We have to learn to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, or even in the tragic - the transcendent moments in our mundane lives.