Recent Mosaics

I've been working on several mosaics during the last two months. Sometimes it's more important -- or perhaps simply easier -- to just keep doing the art than to be doing it and documenting the doing of it... however that's not what I should be doing.

I think I'll just post some final product photos tonight since it's getting late (and I still have to optimize the images...). Over the next few days I'll describe the process and show the incremental images.

The finished mosaic from Verdiano's Contemporary Mosaic Workshop
at the Chicago Mosaic School. No title yet...

Mosaic for Jason  - part gift, part barter for dreadlocks.

Mosaic  for Eileen -- given as a gift -- One of two finished
pieces from Sophie's Dalle de Verre workshop
at the Chicago Mosaic School.  

Ab Ovo -- One of two finished pieces from
Sophie's Dalle de Verre workshop
at the Chicago Mosaic School.   

 Ab Ovo -- backlit

Small mosaic & driftwood sculpture.

I'm also working on a 4' x 3' mosaic for the university that is nearly finished.

Work in progress

I've been working in the studio quite a bit these past days. Not all of the work has been creating art - some of it has been making the space work better for me.

I finished a mosaic ATC (artist trading card) Sunday night. Tonight I finished the mosaic for Jason (my dreadlock artist) except for the grouting.

Here are some images of Jason's mosaic which I will be grouting tomorrow night:

 A photo from Saturday, or maybe Sunday - I'm trying to determine the best size to make the final piece... I wasn't sure when I started how big I wanted to make it, so I did not trim the wedi board until I had enough of the mosaic done to make that decision. The black, square tiles are not glued down here. They are just placed to make it easy to see how it would look at a given size.

How it looked at 9pm tonight.

 From this angle you can see the face, the imagining stars, the letters/words, and my signature.

 I wanted to be able to add the eye and mouth details to the face but I wanted the face to be made up of as few pieces of glass as possible so as to fit with how I did the hair/dreads. However when I tried to cut the face glass so as to have the mouth and the eye be part of a traditional grout line I got a Heath Ledger Joker effect that I thought did not fit the piece (it actually was sort of creepy). So I tossed the first pieces and cut new ones. I put my Dremel in the mini-drill press, and using the glass drill bit, I cut into the face glass to make free-form grout lines in the glass. I am really happy with this so far... we'll see how it looks after it's grouted...

 Before we can be free we must first imagine ourselves free... don't know if that's quoting someone or not. I hear/read so much that I lose track of what I've come up with and what I've simply absorbed along the way...

Something I definitely absorbed - Finally a way to sign my work... following a method that I saw Matteo Randi doing at the Chicago Mosaic School earlier this month... using narrow copper strips, bent into letters and numbers. I wanted to sign and date the pieces in a way that shows when someone is looking at the work (as opposed to signing the back of the piece). I like the way this is working in this mosaic and I'm looking forward to using this method with future mosaics.

Current Mosaic Project

Just some work-in-progress photos (Jason, don't look if you want your mosaic to be a surprise!)

Dreadlocks

In December I went to a salon in Minneapolis and had dreadlocks done. The dreads were created with the use of a "dread perm" and I thought all was well.

The instructions they provided were:

1. Do not wash hair for 3-4 weeks
2. Roll dreads, once/week, with lock tightening gel.
3. Come back in a couple months for a dread maintenance

I ended up needing a dread maintenance at 4 weeks because my hair grows really fast (since December 18th my hair has grown around 1 1/2" - maybe more...) and because the dreads were getting really lumpy and frizzy. I felt like a dreadlocks failure because I was following the instructions perfectly and my dreads were not coming out well.  I thought I was going to have to cut them off and I was quite sad about it all. I realized the once-a-week rolling wasn't going to work for me, but did not know exactly what I should do. I started looking around the web for more information about dreadlocks and ran across the DreadHead HQ website.

On the DHHQ site I learned that  that I should be washing my hair a couple times/week; I should be rolling my dreads everyday instead of once/week; and I did not have to pay a salon $50/hour to do my dread maintenance. After reading the site from cover-to-cover I figured out that I could have done a better job getting my dreads started without going to a salon (umm... $350.00, oh well.... live and learn).

DHHQ has a toll-free number. I called it and talked to Betseh. She was generous with information, helpful, and supportive. After hearing that I'd had a dread perm she was pretty worried about the state of my dreads, but after seeing the photos on Facebook, she said that my dreads looked remarkably well, considering. We talked about how I could rescue them and get them on  track to being exactly what I wanted them to be... 

So now I've done my first waxing (last weekend) and I've been rolling each dread for 1 minute each night (all 80 of them). I don't really fit nicely into the DHHQ alternating maintenance routine since my dreads were salon built and the perm did make them dread quite a bit right away, so I'm kind of coming up with my own way to work my way into an alternating schedule. I'm counting all the time since I had the dreads done as the first month. This past week I've had the initial waxing in my dreads and I'll continue that until next weekend. Then I'll wash out the wax and start the Week A week.

I've got great expectations - already I've noticed that my dreads are much less ziggiedy-zaggiedy and lumpy after just one week of the DreadHeadHQ method... stay tuned.

I'm working in the studio here - on a mosaic.

Dreadlocks

Earlier this month I dreaded my hair. I thought about it for a long, long time. Since I lead a double-life (professional at a Catholic university and artist) I was of two minds about doing it.

I worried a bit about having what some would consider a drastic hairstyle.
I'd wanted to dread my hair for years.

I wondered about taking care of dreads.
I hate mussing with my hair (before I'd just twist it up into a knot on the back of my head and either wrap it with a jumbo hair-tie or stick some sticks through it).

I could not build my dreads on my own - that would take too much time and look too sloppy while they formed.

So I found a place that does dreadlocks and set up an appointment.

Before Dreads:

 

After Dreads:

So far I've only had one person say "Why did you do THAT?" Everyone else has really liked the dreads...

And it's gotten me back into knitting - I'm making hats and headbands for my dread-ness.