Delicious Glass

Sorry for all this time that keeps shoring itself up between posts. I've been swallowed up making mosaic patterns for the last fortnight. It does something peculiar to your mind; making pictures with tiny squares of colour, like playing real-life tetris or tangrams all day long.

Measure scribbles


Maths has been playing a great trick on me lately. I'm forever trying to turn my back on it and yet all I've been thinking about recently is space and measure and colour permutations. No scrap of paper in my house was safe. I had figures and diagrams scribbled down on pages before they had a chance. And what I'm slowly coming round to realise is that I think it's time to let the maths ghost in.

Golden glass cubes

Every time I picked up a piece of golden glass I kept remembering a friend telling me that he used to love eating cubes of jelly as a kid. His Mum would scissor up a slab of Chivers jelly and give him one single cube of concentrated gelatine before the others disappeared in boiling water, shimmering at the bottom of the jelly bowl. I was always half-revolted by the idea of it but now that I've spent so much time eyeing up the golden glass pieces I'm a little curious to see what it would taste like...

Stock sheet

Before I started the mosaic I took stock of how many sheets I had of each colour. The surface area of the concrete pillars is 9 square feet and 10 sheets of tiles covers one square foot (see what I mean about Maths creeping in..)



It was pretty tricky to get started surrounded by 90 sheets of clown colours. I recruited the help of my sister Julie and we looked through the colours and made up a sheet of tile friends.

Tile friends

I planned to break up the pillar into four sections: the eggs, the caterpillar, the chrysalis and the butterfly.

This was the original plan for the eggs.

There were going to be three eggs but I wasn't positive that it would have been clear what they were.

So I changed the design to an egg on a leaf.

When I had the design laid out I broke up the panels into manageable sizes like pieces of a jigsaw and set to work on each piece on a giant board on my lap.

I drew out the caterpillar design on the gum paper.

And the yellow began to creep in...

And the caterpillar took shape! Next I lifted up the tiles and wet the gum paper to stick them down. The tiles are stuck down in reverse so that when you glue the sheet to the wall you can wet the gum paper and then peel it away

All four panels ready to go.

I'm mounting the mosaic to the pillars this week. I can't wait to see what they look like once they're up. I'll put up photos by the end of the week hopefully!

Metamorphosis

I finished the entire mural on Friday, April 30th! I started with class visits to 3rd class on Monday, March 8th. The Easter Holidays fell in the middle of it so all in all it took 5 weeks to complete.

Here's a photo taken from the new school garden. You can just about see the vegetable boxes at the bottom of the picture.


There are wild flower seeds planted at the foot of the mural and I can't wait to see them dancing in great sweeps when they're in full blossom.

I had to lay down planks of wood on the freshly sown soil so that I wouldn't disturb any of the seeds. Although I loved the excuse of having to walk the plank with a tin of paint in each hand and a paintbrush in my mouth!

Ghost flowers

Little red hoods!

Coat one finished

Coat two finished. The black trim begins!

Finished!

The baby



Her older sister..

Still growing...

Almost there...

Ta da!











I'm making a mosaic for two 10ft high pillars at the entrance to the school now. They're going to describe the life cycle of the butterfly. I can't stop watching this very beautiful time-lapse video of the butterfly's metamorphosis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAUSKxWMIh0

My eyes keep going out of focus with complete wonder at how they do it! When my eyes whirr back into use I'll put up photos of the mosaic!