It’s been some time since I had much to say, but I’m still here. I don’t work in my studio nearly as much as I used to, so progress is slow. Since my 2022 surgery, the structure of my life has changed in a lot of small ways and that has impacted my relationship with my mosaic work.

I can’t really single out a particular thing to explain this restructuring, other than that I allowed a space for it to happen. And I really like having that space. It is filled with kids, grandkids, cooking, focus on health and, of course, mosaic. All is good.

This mosaic, The Sound of Green (D Minor), was inspired by my musician son who had just moved to Baltimore to attend The Peabody Institute to earn his Doctor of Music. He feels a strong connection to forests and woods and I wrote some time ago about this as an inspiration for this mosaic in this blog post.

I had a vision for the main elements in local shale and gold, which you can see in the image above. Unfortunately, that was all I had a vision for. At the same time, I was struggling with motivation for mosaic. I was working through the uncertainty of my life being in flux. So the mosaic went abandoned for a few years.

In time, I wanted to get back to my studio despite my lack of motivation. I decided to just work away on something, just to see if I could get into some flow. So I went to work on D Minor in very loose width-wise cuts of A cut (normal) smalti in a variety of greens and in a vertical andamento (see below image). Easy peasy, right?

I did enjoy working like this for a few months. Unfortunately, after executing about 2/3 of the background, I did not like it. It was all wrong and it just did not work. The vertical andamento with the little pieces did not at all serve the organic stone work of the main elements. And I felt that there was too much contrast between the darkest and the lightest greens. It almost came off looking checkerboard-y. Not being sure what to do about that, I got busy with the two fugues which I totally enjoyed creating.

So, now it’s 2026 and I would not let myself move on until I made a decision about D Minor. I finally decided to give up on it as it was just not going to work. One Saturday, I entered my studio with the sole intention of stuffing the mosaic in a trash bag. But, alas, I could not give up on it. I really liked the main elements and the inspiration of my son’s Sound of Green. Additionally, it was a good-sized Kerdi substrate on which I had installed a wooden back support for framing/hanging.

What if I try to scape off all that thinest-adhered green smalti? An absolutely absurd idea! Kerdi board does not take well to this kind of demolition, being even a bit worse than Wedi, in my opinion. But really, what did I have to lose? Many grueling and messy hours later, the deed was done with minimal damage to the main elements and maximal damage to the substrate surface. After more hours repairing everything, D Minor had a new life; it still had a chance to be realized.

Okay, so I needed a more organic, even robust, approach. After considering a couple of andamento ideas, I stumbled upon a mostly crazy paving andamento with a lot of large, sheared chunks of smalti B (Ravenna) cuts, along with some A cuts and even some of the small pieces that were scraped off—a reincarnation of sorts. I also eliminated the darkest and the lightest greens from the palette, and am including some Mexican smalti in green and green iridescent as well.

I just love these luscious chunks of sheared B (Ravenna) cut greens and I am enjoying this project. Shearing is terribly messy and often difficult to control the thickess, but I do think that this adamento better serves the mosaic. Will it be successful? We’ll see.

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Progress on The Sound of Green (D Minor)