i have all of the planes mosaiced. in this photo, the planes are just laying on top of the base or on top of each other.

i have also started mosaicing the base with the off-white smalti. i am cutting the smalti into very small rectangles... a kind of mini-smalti... about 3/8" x 3/16" x 1/8" thick. there are a couple of reasons for this: i need to keep the weight down, and this will approximately cut the weight of the smalti in half, which will help a lot; the other reason is that i am hoping that by using small strips laid in a vertical andamento, that it will not fight with the grid andamento of the planes. this grid andamento of the planes is the unifying feature of the piece... hopefully... if i can get the planes mosaiced precisely on the grid lines, and then line them up precisely, i am hoping that all the planes will be unified on this kind of global grid.

the normal width of smalti is about the same as the width of the gold, and unless i wanted to cut the smalti to the same size as the gold, like i did in gold rising, i think the andamento of the smalti would have been a problem with the andamento of the planes. cutting the smalti the same size as the gold is not really as easy as it seems, and thinning it to lessen the weight would be more difficult than with the smaller strips.

of course, it is very difficult and time-consuming to cut the smalti into these small, thin strips as well. however, i feel that i can control the thickness, with less waste, by cutting them this way.