My Blog Has Moved
If you’re interested in following my blog, please feel free to visit it at its new home on my professional website. Hope to see you there!
If you’re interested in following my blog, please feel free to visit it at its new home on my professional website. Hope to see you there!
I’ve got a bit of a head-start on my next project. A few years ago, I started a small piece that was more of an exercise. I needed something to putter around with while I was waiting for some materials to come in for a large commission.
Attempting to confront my aversion to working with red, I decided to work on some color gradation. At the time, I was pondering heartache, sadness - matters of the heart. This was around the time that I had to make the very difficult decision to put down a family dog. Several other life changes were also happening at the time.
Above is where I left the 9" x 11" exercise when my commission work resumed. I liked it and thought I might finish it someday, so I held onto it. As I was working on my last piece, If I Were A Tree, I entertained the idea that it would be my next project.
As my mind shifted to my exercise becoming a finished work, my concept for it began to evolve. I wanted it to be bigger and to fit my Impromptu series. I began to see how to accomplish this, but I would have to make some changes.
In order to enlarge the ¼" Wedi substrate from 11" x 14", I cut a 13" x 16" piece of ½" Wedi. Next, I cut 2" strips of ¼" Wedi. Then, I spread a layer of thinset on the ½" substrate, anchored the original ¼" substrate in the lower left corner, and filled out the top and right sides with the 2" strips of ¼" Wedi.
After leaving it to cure, I added the washers and bolts and attached a wood frame to the back.
I had to remove pieces in two areas, shown in the black circles above, in order to retrofit the washers. Now, its ready.
As it turns out, I have a new dose of unwelcome inspiration for this piece. My younger brother died 8 days ago. He had congestive heart failure and left us, it seems peacefully, in his sleep. He was a loner, a bit of a recluse, and suffered some deep wounds in his adult life. I’ll be contemplating the inevitability of hurt and loss as I work on this, and I’ll dedicate this mosaic to my brother.
A few months ago, I left Facebook, sort of.
When I first joined Facebook years ago, my primary focus was to be a part of the international mosaic community. I uploaded a lot of mosaic images, created albums, etc. As time went on, more of my family members and close friends also joined FB.
In the beginning, it was manageable to have one profile page for my mosaic friends and my personal connections. Over the years, my number of friends grew as I accepted invitations from other mosaic artists who were mutual friends with my friends.
A few years ago, I found out about the FB Business Page (from which you are probably reading this post), referred to as a Fan Page at the time. Although I did create one, other mosaic artists continued to friend me. I was always happy to make a new mosaic acquaintance and see their work, but 1600 friends later, I found myself becoming more sensitive to the balance of personal and professional issues.
So, a few months ago, I deactivated that account. However, because I had set-up another family account, I was able to continue my business page. My desire is to keep up with the international mosaic community via my business page. I am slowly adding likes of others’ business pages to my personal FB profile.
If anyone thought that I had unfriended them, I did not. Hopefully, I have not even been missed. I certainly do miss the personalities and postings and conversations to which I had daily access, but I look forward to continuing to interact with, and meet, artists on Facebook via my business page.
WIP, continued
After studying my photos from yesterday, I thought there was a little area that needed a redo. Then, in the middle of the night, after being awakened by my dog Lucy, I started thinking about that little area. This, of course, kept me from being able to go back to sleep.
So, I reached for my trusty iPhone and looked at the pics. Hmm… I thought, that’s not so bad, and I decided that it did not warrant the effort and risk of reworking.
That was last night and, as they say, today is a new day, which means that I now felt that it needed redoing after all. The task involved removing 8 pieces at the top of the 010 gold streak — 4 pieces in the top row and 4 pieces beneath. My problem was with the line of gold that is actually the second row from the top; following it from left to right, I thought the curve downward, as the topmost row is worked in, was too sharp. It distracted me.
Removing gold is usually tricky as it chips rather easily. In this piece, removal is even trickier because the pieces are so close together. This enhances the potential for damaging a neighboring piece or pieces. In particular, I didn’t want to damage the large irregular piece that the lower 4 pieces lined. Fortunately, I’ve acquired some skill over the years removing tight pieces. However, I’m not sure that is something to be bragging about.
Well, the operation went very smoothly, but I think that my midnight assessment may have been correct after all. Although I think that the line has been improved, it really was pretty minor.
Below are the before and after pics, in that order. What do you think?
Today, I am in a better place with mosaic. I’ve given up on the idea of finishing it this month, or even next month, or even this year. It will take as long as it takes.
Part of the completion expectation, the self-imposed deadline, was because of my busy October and December with family things. Another part was the 2015 MAI submission time which will be coming up soon. I did not submit anything last year because of a couple of big exhibitions that I had going on. I was hoping to have my tree finished in time to submit it this fall, but I’ve let go of that. Silly how I can get caught-up in such stuff.
So why is this piece taking so long? It is partly due to the cutting precision. I’ve talked about that in previous posts. Another aspect that has added to the time is that I am controlling the height of all the material.
The shale pieces that I’ve used are very thin and have a relatively level surface. In the tree trunk and branches, I did not want them to look like sunken areas amidst the marble. I knew that I would be using a lot of gold for the background, so I decided to use the relative height of the gold as the relative height for all the elements of the mosaic. So I raised the shale, and I cut the marble to have it be similar height to the shale.
I also did not want the smalti elements — the leaves, blue streaks, and bits in the tree — to be much higher than the rest of the mosaic. As much as I like chunky texture, I thought that would not look right for those elements to be jutting out. Sheared smalti tends to be very thick and its tricky to thin it down.
And now, I’ve got a blue streak of sheared smalti calling me…
No progress pics today, just a little commentary.
Have you ever had a project that seemed like it would never end? And you fell into focusing on all that remained undone? And you started hating the idea of another day on that project?
Yes, I let myself get to that place with this project. The background — the sky — is moving so slowly! Its quite challenging to keep my andamento flowing through the leaves and branches. Actually, this might be the most technically demanding thing that I have ever done. There is so much sky that I feel like I am just doing the same thing every day and will keep doing the same thing every day for another month or two. I feel this way because it is the reality of it.
I’m trying to think of another project that was so technically demanding. L'entrata comes very close.
© 2014 Jacqueline Iskander. L'entrata, detail.
I spent about four months on L'entrata, which was my view from the Orsoni classroom in 2006 when I attended a two-week master class. I started the mosaic after returning home from Venice. This piece was a real challenge for me at that time, and probably would be now, as well, if I were to attempt it. However, the subject matter was quite varied throughout the piece, which kept it from being tedious.
If I Were A Tree, on the other hand, is incredibly tedious. I am almost halfway through the sky background and still looking at another six weeks, at least, to finish. So, I have to really work on my head game on this one. It seems to be helping now that I am almost halfway. There is something about that halfway point that helps me see the end coming.
Another thing that is happening as I progress through the sky is that the tree is coming to life. I was worried about the gold sky diminishing the leaves and, although that is happening, I think that the leaves are holding their own. However, I really wanted the tree to be strong, as strong as the red leaves, and I feel like that is happening.
As the tree comes into its strength, it is helping me to keep my head straight.
“You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.
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