Almost Ready to Start

Here it is as of right now: the xeroxed sections taped together, lovingly placed under plexiglass. (What a mess this work space is. I try very hard to get it organized, but the fundamental problem isn't disorder, it is excess and gluttony. I simply need to throw out/give away/fob off a lot of stuff. But every time I pick up an object I think, "Maybe I'll need that some day." When would I possibly need an entire tub of old wooden spools? I don't know but imagine I do and then how will I feel when they are long gone? Pretty ridiculous, right? So there they stay, along with a thousand pounds of other things I have squirrelled away in here and never use. [See those blue spools? Fifteen 1 pound spools of 100% extemely itchy wool in "grenadier" from the 1950s. Why? What could I possibly do with such things? I have no idea but there they are.])

Here's a closer look. It's a pretty cool image, even in b/w. Stan Lee sure had a gift for drafting a dramatic, action-packed image. (I'm not so impressed with the dialogue but I suppose Oscar Wildesque wit--or even P. G. Wodehouse ["I say steady on there, old chap, what?"]--would not be quite The Thing.)

And here is the glass (purchased today NOT at Delphi but at nearby and utterly ordinary Stallings Glass--oh, Stallings is ok but it doesn't leave one breathless, unless from the smell of the mildewy carpet) which will soon be cut into teeny tiny pieces. But not tonight.

The Thing Update

So: I cut off the broken edge of the plexiglass, so now I have a (roughly) 45.5" x 48" piece of plexiglass. (My resentment over that whole event is fading, but still present.) And now the question is: How do you go about creating a giant , fairly accurate, reproduction of the page from the comic? Simon suggested using a Smartcart from school and projecting the image up onto a giant piece of paper, and then sketching it out. That would work if I had good drafting skills (which I don't) and had the patience to do a good job (which I don't). So I xeroxed several copies of the page, cut one of the xeroxed sheets into small (about 1.5" x 1.5") pieces, and then enlarged each one 400%. Here are the pieces:

I did the math and still the enlargements were too big, so I tried again, this time with only a 375% enlargement. Here are those pieces:

Now I will cut off the excess, tape them together, place them under the plexiglass and BEGIN! But before I can do that I have to make a run to Delphi Glass (EEE! Everyone I know who has been there says it is UNBELIEVABLE--the selection, the options, the hugeness of it all.) in Lansing sometime this week. The comic uses only 8 colors but I want to make sure (1) that I have enough of each color to finish the whole thing (like yarn, glass sheets have a very specific color run and a batch using exactly the same chemicals but made at another time won't be exactly the same) and (2) that I get colors that really POP. What is the point of doing a comic book page in dull colors?

Meanwhile, The Thing

Yee haw! The package (from U.S. Plastics) arrived, along with a complementary catalog of plastic devices, gadgets and containers all in various plasticated colors. I had no idea one could buy plastic buckets in so many shapes, sizes and colors. (It also contained a small religious pamphlet reassuring me that, if I were to give my life over to Christ right now, I could die in peace, knowing that I will soon be living as Jesus' wife. Move over Simon, you've got competition!)

Here it is, all ready to be turned into a replication of an original Jack Kirby version of The Thing. (No, the plastic isn't blue; it is clear. It comes coated with a thin sheet to prevent it from getting scratched.)

What's this? I didn't order a nearly $100 sheet of plexiglass with a busted out corner. But apparently that is what I got. Sigh. Yes, the comic page isn't exactly square and so this can be cut down to match the exact proportions of the page. But that isn't what I had in mind for the start of this project. Argh. Why do I get the feeling this is the first--and far from the last-- moment of disappointment I will have with this Thing?

The Plaid is Done!

Here is the plaid with both yellows all done and half the cream patches done. By this point, I was thoroughly sick of this and really looking forward to finishing the background of the upper half of the piece.


Ta Da! The Plaid Is Done! Of course, now I have to decide once and for all how to design the background behind the roses, get the glass, cut it, and get to it. Now, rather than very exciting, it seems like a lot of work.

And for the big question: Does it look like a plaid tablecloth or just so much nonsense? I can't go there.

Getting the Plaid Done

Here I am just getting started on the plaid pattern that will be in the foreground of the piece. I decided to start on the middle color, the light yellow and get all those done first. The diagonal line was to indicate a fold in the fabric and I thought at the time that a light orange would go well with the darker yellow.
Here I am almost done with the mid-yellows. This is really tedious, much less pleasant than doing the flowers or the fruit. (The fruit was the most fun--perhaps because it is food related or because the vivid red and green are so nice to look at.)
This is where I am as of last night--the mid-yellows are done, the orange lines are gone (see pile of rejected orange bits at top right of photo) and have been replaced with very dark yellow. I'm almost done with the dark yellow--only one patch remains to be finished, just to the left of the fruit platter. I am going to complete the remaining patches with a soft/ivory white. The dark yellow glass was "crap glass" (a term that someone in my art class came up with to describe glass that doesn't cut cleanly, but shatters instead) so I will be very glad to be done with it. The ivory glass is great--it cuts cleanly and effortlessly.

MEANWHILE the plexiglass for The Thing still has not arrived, and Simon is getting restless.

The Thing

After grumbling about my affair with glass for almost a year, a few weeks ago Simon announced (relevant to nothing we were talking about), "You know, if you mosaicked something GOOD, I would like it a lot more." Well, what IS good? What EXACTLY would you like to see done with glass mosaics? After a brief pitter-pattering of him scurrying up to one of his secret spaces (a box in out our closet) back he came with a midewy, tattered, comic. "THIS!" he declared, opening the page to this:


What the hell is that? So, after some long hours of Marvel-lore explanation (who knew?) I was given my instructions: spare no expenses making a super-fabulous, super-sized replication of this picture. After stewing this over for some days, I have decided to go with a 48" x 48" sheet of plexiglass (I had no idea how expensive large sheets of plaxiglass are), I'll frame it, and then backlight it so the light shines through the glass. Yeah, it will weigh a LOT. Here is my inspiration:

Latest Project

Again, I wanted to do something really big--this is a 2' x 4' wall hanging. (What the hell will I do with these things? I have not a clue.) I liked the idea of doing a traditional still life (our mosaic art class was sharing a room with beginning drawing, and they were doing the standard fruit/vases thing I remember doing in 8th grade art). In retrospect I don't know why I wanted to do this, but I'm seeing it through. Here is the fruit bowl part:


And here is a closeup of some of the roses in the vase (which isn't pictured here).

I've decided to to a modified check table cloth in the foreground and a bluey/turquoise/citrony green background--which, I am guessing, will take quite a bit of time since the pieces I am using for this are about 2 mm x 2mm each. (On the table, they were about 3/4" x 1/2".)

It's Been a Long Time

I feel like I am about to confess to having an adulterous affair--worse still, one that has been going on for over a year, is still great and that I have no intention of ending. It's not that I don't still love knitting and yarn, because I do, but it just doesn't thrill me right now. Maybe it will again sometime--after all, I have been with my knitting needles for over twenty years. You just don't throw away that kind of history. But for right now, I am really have a great time making mosaics with glass. It started innocently enough when I took a night class at the FIA (Flint Institute of Arts). I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just curious. But once I tried it, it was great. The glass is just so amazing--similar to yarn in that you can really make anything you want, any size or shape you want, to any design that you want. And the colors are equally vivid, brilliant and rich. But, unlike the coziness and nestiness of yarn, glass is brittle, fragile, and dangerous--a little thrilling. Here is a bit of my supply so far:

This is my first project--which doesn't photograph so well because the hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of pieces all reflect the light at a slightly different angle. It's impossible to get all the pieces looking their best all at the same time. This is a table top about 48" x 30". I made the design up as I went along because I had no idea what I was doing.


Here is a closer look:
Here again.

That table took up the entire fall class (8 weeks) and I took another class in Winter (again 8 weeks), during which I did this window. The stained glass is on a storm window (thank you, Wandmachers, for donating this to the cause). It is bigger (and therefore heavier) than the table, I would guess about 56" x 36". I wanted to do something entirely different so I would learn how to cut larger, curved shapes. And I did.
This fish isn't what I wanted him (her? it?) to be. I would do it very differently if I could do it again, but isn't that the way of things.