Excellent European Adventure

Here’s a slideshow of my best photos from our time in Europe in September.

Sold x 4

Rhythms: July (2008) 8” x 8” | 20cm x 20cm. Sodalite, granite, smalti, piastrina, shell, lapis, glass, Swarovski crystals.

Rhythms: October (2008) 8” x 8” | 20cm x 20cm. Marble, travertine, onyx, porcelain, vitreous, carnelian, chrysoprase, piastrina, other glass, seed beads.

I was very happy to have sold a few mosaics at the Bandon Library’s 4th Annual Mosaic Show in June, in Bandon, OR. The two pieces, above from my Rhythms series found new homes, as well as the two minis below.

These were two of six little mosaics I did as part of the 2008 MAO Monthly Challenge. Their titles reflect the theme of the challenge.

Memoryware 3” x 2” | 8cm x 5cm. Broken Spode, costume jewelry, glass beads.

Architecture 3” x 2” | 8cm x 5cm. Onyx, hematite, shell, glass, Swarovski crystals.

Paths Taken

Paths Taken, alternate view

Finished! There are still a couple of areas where I’m not sure how the navigation should be handled, if indeed there is a should to be known, but I’m resisting the temptation to tinker with it further. I’m sure there are a few different ways in which it could be handled, and I’m hoping that I’ve landed on one of them.

I’m mostly happy with it, and I enjoyed the entire process. My work in Procreate was very beneficial and I look forward to using it on my next project, which I will get to after I finish a large one that is already in progress.

I have now finished 3 unfinished mosaics in the past 2-3 years, ones that sat waiting for years, the longest wait being over 15 years. It feels good to finish things on which I had previously given up. I’ve still got 2 more unfinished mosaics from years past, but I’m going to move on to a few new works first.

Paths Taken, Part 11

Just a brief video on finishing the edges.

Paths Taken, Part 10

In this video, I talk about various aspects of the smalti execution and finishing.

Paths Taken, in progress

I'm in the finishing phase now.

Green is such a glorious color! I've always been pretty neutral when it comes to green, but I thoroughly enjoyed working with these gorgeous greens. They completely captivated me.

I will be making a few minor corrections—of course—including finding a place for my initials—I just forgot. This has been a challenging and very rewarding project. I'll be posting a video, Part 10, tomorrow or Friday and will talk more about it. 

Framing Mosaics: Vexed by Wedi?

In the above video, I'll share a few things I know about framing mosaics, and how I have found to deal with challenging substrates like Wedi Board.

Iskandria: Video Tour

What is this little mosaic all about? I'll tell you about it in the above video.

Paths Taken: Palette and Procreate

Previous posts on this project.

 Continuing where I left off, I talk about my palette and how I am using the Procreate app in my design process.

By importing an image of my proposed palette (at left) into Procreate, I was able to create swatches that I could use to refine my palette and play with design ideas around color and shading. 

Paths Taken, Part 7

Good progress in the past few days! I got to the point where I was really enjoying working on my drawing of andamento lines and working out how I needed to navigate the flaring and some of the trickier intersections and diversions of flow.

In this video, I will discuss how I got to this point and some of issues that came up.  

At left is my drawing as of this video. There are a couple of areas that I will be tweaking, and I talk about those in the video. Right now, I feel it is about 99% there.

I'm very happy with the flow and the overall size of the pieces, especially the shape and placement of the larger pieces which will be cut from smalti B-cuts and pizzas.

Next, I'll finalize my palette and how I want to work with the shades and values that I have. 

Storyteller: Video Tour

The above video takes a closer look at my mosaic Storyteller. 

Paths Taken: Yet More on Andamento

In this video, I'm discussing some of my challenges in working out how to express the flow that I would like to express.

Paths Taken: More on Andamento

After reflecting on my previous discussion about andamento, I wanted to talk about it a little more and clarify my understanding of the term. 

To summarize:

1. The English translation of andamento is a/the trend. Mosaically, I understand andamento to be the way things go, the movement, or more specifically, the sense of movement.
2. There are multiple ways to express the chosen andamento for a mosaic, including cutting and laying techniques—different opuses, and material and color choices.

In the above video, I talk about andamento as it relates to my current project, and I offer a couple of examples of different andamenti and the techniques chosen to express those andamenti.

Anatomy of a Mosaic: Paths Taken

I started this mosaic about 4 years ago, but retreated from it as I was heading into a sabbatical of sorts. I had decided that I did not like the pattern of the pieces of shale that I had adhered to the substrate. I thought that, at some point in the future, I would remove the pieces or just throw it away. 

Now, 4 years later, I think it will make a great andamento challenge for me. I've decided to finish it, and to take you along with me as I go. 

I'm calling it Paths Taken, and I will blog the making of it, starting with this post. I'm not very good at making videos, but what the heck! I think even a so-so video can help explain things and be a useful accompaniment to photos and text. So, here goes!

The first thing I needed to do was to make a support frame for the back of the mosaic. Adding a support frame allows for more flexibility in hanging and framing decoratively, and takes care of the problem that Wedi creates in making such choices. With a support frame on the back, the mosaic can be decoratively framed or not, and hanging hardware can be installed on this back support frame.

I used 8 Kerdi washers, which are similar to Wedi washers, to properly bolt the support frame to the back of the Wedi board.

Let's just talk a bit about the materials:

Back when I started this mosaic, I printed images of it in which I whited-out the bare substrate so that I could play around with the andamento. Fortunately, I kept a couple of my attempts and I recently found them:

I'll take some time now to revisit and complete my andamento drawing, and I'll be back with you when it's ready to go!

Homage To Kilauea: Andamento

Someone wanted to know why I thought the andamento for my recent mosaic, Homage To Kilauea, was so difficult. I must clarify that just because it was difficult for me does not mean that it would be for everyone. I doubt that someone like Giulio Menossi, who has truly mastered a very refined andamento in his stunning portraiture work, would have been as challenged on this piece as I was. This kind of refined andamento requires, I believe, a whole lotta practice.

Looking back over my years of mosaic experience, I feel like I have only dabbled in this kind of andamento. Without years of experience doing this kind of thing, I find it is vital to draw out the andamento, piece by piece. I did not do that with this mosaic because, when I started it, I was just playing around. As I progressed on the work, my innate sense of seriousness and challenge led me to take the andamento more seriously than I had initially intended. 

So, what was so difficult about it for me? Three things:

1. The spaces, which I'll call channels, around the large shale pieces and the small stones are very narrow. That's a quarter in the pic on the right, which is about the size of a euro. (It's cloudy today so the image at right is on the dark side—apologies.) The channels primarily range about 3/8" wide to about 1 1/4" at the widest, not counting the lower right area where the blue flares out to the edge.
2. The average size of the smalti pieces is quite small, the majority being between 1/8" and 1/4". 
3. It is just very tricky to express flow around sharp curves and into and out of areas of varying size—small to large/large to small—and where the flow goes in all directions.

With such small spaces in which to work, I felt like a more refined andamento would best express the flow that I wanted. My study with Menossi doing portraiture is the most refined andamento I have ever worked with, and the most difficult. Expressing the contours of the face, flowing in and out of the shadows and angles and fullness and hollows of a face, using andamento as well as color and shading, is a demanding technical skill.

I worked with this kind of refined andamento on a recent work, Storyteller, but to a much lesser degree than I attempted here. After completing this work, I've decided to do another work incorporating this kind of andamento. I'll blog about it as I go, starting with my next post in the next few days. The piece will be similar to this one and will present the same andamento challenges. Let's see how I do.

Homage To Kilauea

This piece was meant to be a fun little diversion. After I finished Stabby, I wanted to just play with some of my back yard shale—the 8 large pieces of stone— and some special stones—5 small rocks— that were gifted to me by a fellow mosaic artist. 

The large shale piece in the lower right of the mosaic cracked as I was cementing it in place; however, only the topmost layer of it cracked. The crack was too rough to leave it, so I played with spreading it a little bit. This created the crevice. If you look at it closely, you can see that although it looks like two pieces, it is actually a single piece. 

As I contemplated what to do with the crevice, it seems that Kilauea's activity on our family's favorite and much-visited Hawaiian island called to me. Before that, I was just going to use green shades of smalti for the piece.

Homage To Kilauea, in sunlight, with some reflection

Homage To Kilauea, detail

I just happened to have some red/orange/yellow scraps from previous projects, as well as some blues, so I decided to rely on scraps as much as possible. As it turns out, I only put a dent in the red scraps. 

As I worked, I began paying more and more attention to the andmento. This turned out to be the most challenging thing I have attempted—andamento wise—since Giulio Menossi's portraiture classes.

The flow areas around the large shale pieces average an inch or less, so the smalti is cut quite small. What started out as a fun little diversion turned into a multi-week, serious technical exercise. Ugh! How did this happen? Why can't I just play? And, another familiar refrain: What was I thinking???

I ended up reworking a few areas that were done earlier, of course, because I just couldn't let it go, could I? It was very difficult to flow the smalti around a couple of areas in the shale pieces and the stone obstacles—a.k.a. land masses and islands, and there are a couple of areas that I'm still not completely happy with, but I'm calling it done!

Stabby: A Video Tour

Above: Stabby, detail

To watch the video, click on the small, white right arrow—difficult to see—centered in the above image.