Sea and Sky Mosaic

I think I got a perfect sailboat cut for this mosaic. I wanted to make the sailboat first - for some silly reason it felt like if I got that part right the rest would fall right into place... Don't know if that's going to happen, but the sailboat is exactly what I saw in my mind's eye...

You cannot really tell from this photo, but the glass is the thick Italian smalti and I chipped the edges after cutting the shape. I'm really pleased with it.

After that small success I thought I'd try doing some of the water. It's made up of opaque and transparent green, blue and purple glass that I got at Kokomo Opalescent Glass when Wes & I went on a road trip this past summer.

Detail view of the first evening's work.

New Projects

Want to see the new things I'm doing?

Sorry for the long dry spell – I've been working on several new projects and it's difficult to make myself take the time to write when I want to be doing...

Projects:
A stone & glass mosaic which might end up in a show at the Gallery of Contemporary Mosaics in Chicago (at the Chicago Mosaic School)
A clean up of the back porch and yard (Wes and the bees were part of the backyard urban farming tour, so...)
New shelving in the pantry (ok, it's not really a pantry - it's just this weird cubbyhole at the top of the stairs going from the kitchen down to the basement)
A large planter for the front yard (concrete with glass & stone mosaic)
A public art commission

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First the small mosaic:

Working title: The Long Year.

Some of the materials for the mosaic.

It measures 18" x 11" and is made up of two partial pizzas of smalti, rocks I collected from the river, tumbled stones I purchased at various places, some landscaping stone I picked up (legitimately - from a local stone company) and some glass from Kokomo Opalescent Glass.

Inspiration - all the sorrow and joy life brings you and the strange way you can experience both at the same time.

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The back porch:

 

At our house the porches can get pretty messy... and they sometimes stay that way far longer than we like. Earlier this month Wes & I cleaned the back porch and the back yard. It's so much nicer to sit out there now.

Inspiration - the Backyard Urban Farming Tour - Wes & the bees were part of the tour...

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The rebuilt pantry:

This may not look like much - but if you'd seen the old shelves you would simply be amazed...

Inspiration - not being able to find anything and the ugly-gross old shelves...

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The Planter:
This has been dominating my front room for a month now...

Planter - 48" x 80" x 16"

I'm waiting for more fiberglass mesh - it's ordered and should be here sometime next week. I also need to find a place to get some concrete additive for accelerating the curing/adding strength.

The foam armature/base is made up of FoxBlocks reinforced with 1/2" rebar. The entire planter will be wrapped in the fiberglass mesh (most of it is right now) and nailed. Then it will have layers of concrete and mesh and concrete added until the concrete is around 1/2 - 3/4" thick. Once the concrete work is done I will mosaic it.

Inspiration - the prickly pear cactus that grows so well in Minnesota...

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And, finally the public art commission which merits a post of its own...

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.