Learning new mosaic skills

This is the first post of my new, separate mosaic blog.  For years, I've kept a blog at cosmicbluemonkey.blogspot.com.  I started it as an online journal when our house was being built and became a chronicle of the process of homesteading in the country while raising a child and building a business as an artist.  But, sometimes I feel like the writing jumps back and forth between posts about beekeeping, gardening, and tending livestock to posts about art shows and mosaic learning experiences.  It makes sense to me, but I think creating a separate blog for art will give the writing more cohesion.

It has been a very slow year for my business, financially, but I've been busy with a wide variety of events.  I've given lectures and presentations, led group mosaic events, and participated in a number of exhibits.  I realized recently that this has really been a year of learning and growing as an artist.  While I intended to keep honing my particular style and technique, opportunities to learn new skills keep popping up, and I've been grabbing them by the horns.

In August, I spent four days in Hillsboro, OR with Lynn Adamo.  First, I attended her hammer & hardie workshop and learned to use a tool that had been sitting in my studio for a year.  The hammer & hardie is the original tool used to chop stone into small quadrangles for all of those ancient Roman and Turkish mosaic masterpieces.  It continues to be the tool of the masters in Italy.  After a captivating presentation by Rachel Saeger (rachelsagermosaics.com) at the mosaic summit in Lexington, KY, I ordered my own H&H, thinking I could teach myself to use it (though Rachel warned us in the lecture that it really requires hands-on instruction and lots of practice.)  And, I did find myself unable to break stone or tile with any consistency.

But, in two days of instruction on positioning and the correct inflection of the wrist, how to avoid muscle fatigue, and practice with just about every type of material, I was chopping stone and glass into little squarish shapes!  And I can't tell you how gratifying it is to open a piece of stone to find the surprises inside.  All of the tiny facets that emerge are so textural, organic, and interesting, and I am having fun piecing them into abstract designs that have a completely different look from anything else I've done.

During my stay with Lynn, I also helped to complete a large fish for her new installation in Astoria, using smalti.  Because the material is fairly expensive, I rarely work with smalti, a colorful handmade glass that is usually chopped into square chunks.  But I love the look of smalti and this chance to practice working with it, along with seeing the nuts and bolts of creating a large-scale mosaic that will be inlaid over a concrete pad, was very educational.  Lynn was meeting the challenges of creating the mosaic on mesh in sections that would ultimately fit together seamlessly, and I had the opportunity to be a witness as she brainstormed some of the glitches as they came up.  What a great experience to participate in a project like this without being the person responsible for the outcome!  All the fun with none of the stress.

That's me, working with Richard Davis.  Lynn Adamo took this photo and she has blogged about the whole project.

While chatting with Richard over smalti, the topic of pebble mosaic naturally came up.  I love the look and practical application of pebble mosaic, but I've been reluctant to add it to my repertoire because it is ONE MORE THING and I feel like I should be focusing more rather than less.  However, Richard offered to give me a basic overview of the process, and how could I pass that up?

So, last weekend, I headed to Whidbey Island and learned to make pebble mosaic.  The difficulties in making pebble mosaic include collecting stones, which is illegal in many places and expensive to buy them.  The other aspect is the weight of the slabs when they are made in forms, which is the method I learned.  The pebbles are placed in the base of the form, concrete is poured, and it is flipped over so that the pebbles become the surface.  Flipping and moving the finished mosaic requires a lot of strength.  

Here is the mosaic laid out in the form, before pouring concrete.  

Despite the foreseeable challenges involved in pebble mosaic, I'm very excited and grateful for this new information, and I can't wait to add to our garden walkways.  I started collecting stones from the creeks on our property yesterday.  All of it is black, and it's going to take many trips to the creek over many weeks to collect enough to get started, but I am undaunted.

The edge of my creek, full of smooth stones.

So, I find that this has been a year of acquiring new skills and honing the ones I had.  I expect winter to be an incubation period, as it almost always is, and I look forward to seeing what will emerge in the spring.