Jelly Fishing

Meanwhile, what have I been doing in class? Jelly Fishing. I actually started a piece that was going to be a close up of a coast line that had giant sea urchins and such, but then decided that I wanted to make those in ceramics, do the sand in unglazed black porcelain tile (which is AMAZINGLY difficult to get--you wouldn't have thought so but there you go), and have various rocks, shells, bits of mirror and glass--a mixed media piece, in short. Anyway, it was turning into a real confused palaver and, until I sorted that out, I had to get started with something in class. So, I set aside the other one (which is going to be on a piece of wood) and, inspired by some recently acquired books on the ocean, coral reefs and such (the benefits of a great Christmas), I set to work on this. I really had no plan other than use colors I would not ordinarily use and to use an entirely different pattern for each creature.

I'm pleased with how the jellyfish looks. This whole mosaic was incredibly satisfying to do; everything fell together just right. One person has said that it looks like a landscape in outer space and the brain coral in the upper left is a moon; another said it looked like an underwater Wonka Factory with everything made out of candy. Sounds like a novel for the 9-12 set in the making.

The Thing is DONE!

I can't believe it. Here it is, after a mere 19 months or so of effort. I tried to photograph The Thing (as I call it) from straight-on, but there was always a glare spot on The Thing's face. I had a lens filter, a bounce flash--no dice, still glare. A real photographer would know what to do, but this photographer simply moved to the side a foot or so.

Simon insisted that there be a penguin classic placed in front of The Thing to show the size of it. (It's The Innocence of Father Brown.)

Here is a close up of The Hulk's face. Because his face is, strictly speaking, a human face with real emotion, it was the hardest thing to capture with the glass. I don't think it's a complete success, but it isn't as bad as I feared it would be when I was putting it together over a year ago.
Here is The Thing's face. I was very worried about how rock would be translated by glass, but I think he is a real success. It's shiny, but still fragmented enough to look like crumbly granite. I thought I would hate working on The Thing, but I actually really liked it; the black outlines look sharp and the orange is bright and "pops."
The other major worry: how would the speech bubbles look? I think they turned out fairly well. I used Delorean Gray (why Delorean?) grout, which is a dove gray sort of color, so it contrasts just a bit with the white glass but the difference isn't too jarring.

OK: It took about 19 months, cost about $650 ($100 for the sheet of plexiglass; about $500 for glass; $10 for grout; probably $15 for Weldbond glue; maybe $10 for wood frame and hardware; $15 for color copying of original comic page). Hmmm. Was it worth it? Well, I would do it again but I won't do it again. Though I was looking at the cover of a Hellboy comic and that definitely got me thinking about a REALLY big mosaic...10' by 10' maybe???

New Year Updates

These are projects I completed some time ago but haven't gotten around to posting. This was the nautilus shell mentioned earlier. I finished making it in June or July and it was fired in August, but I didn't get around to glazing it until early December. This was in part because I hadn't decided what glaze I wanted to use but also because I hate glazing at was putting it off as long as possible.

Here is a closeup of the inside. Everyone who sees this asks, "What are you going to do with it?" I think that is a weird question. I'm not going to do anything with it. (Someone at the FIA suggested that I use it as a planter outside during the summer. Huh?)

It's hard to get myself to work on The Thing during the winter because the basement is SO COLD. (I need to convince everyone I live with to move into the basement so that I can work on the mosaics upstairs.) But I have (slowly) been getting some work done. I am ALMOST to the point of being very, very sick of working on the background.

And, just to show that I do still knit, here is the latest attempt to make a small sweater for someone who can't wear anything itchy. All past attempts have failed (either because I had miscalculated and the sweater ended up being too small or because he had grown by the time I finished). Ever hopeful...

Thanksgiving Weekend

And here this is, finally. It's always a bit of a let down finishing something. Even if it turns out well (and I suppose I will admit that this one is well enough), there are always things I wish I had done differently. The blue background looks nice (nicer even than in this photo) but still...
And here this is, still so much potential. I'm nearing the outer ring. I won't set myself a date but it surely would be nice to be done with this before Christmas.

More on...The Thing

Here this is, black frame finished (both the wooden frame that will support this on the wall and the lights that go behind it and the black, glass mosaicked frame around the picture). I've also begun on the background, which I'm doing with "architecture glass" which is frosted glass that lets in light but obscures whatever is on the other side (which, in this case, will be wiring and a wall).
Here is a closeup. The glue I am using, Weldbond, takes a really long time (2 weeks) to become completely clear so you can see how much work I do at any given time by how wide the various bands of drying glue are. The 3 inch wide thick white glue band was done two days ago. Underneath The Thing is a big sheet of kraft paper, about 3' x 4', onto which I drew out concentric circles to use as guides for placing the glass. I thought I was being very clever by using a nail in the middle, tying a piece of string to it and, at the other end, a pencil. Then, or so the plan was, I would spin the pencil around the nail, letting out ever increasing lengths of string so that I would get ever larger, perfect circles. Except that the string went around the nail and so got shorter, and so my circles spiral. In could be a good effect if it was noticable, but it will be broken up with the Hulk and Thing bodies. So will it look like perfect circles, slightly wobbly circles or an ever increasing (vertigo inducing) spiral? Or just a big slab of indistinctly broken glass?

Getting Somewhere?

Here is one thing I have been working on. After a sputtering start (doing and then undoing the tentacles) I am finally back to work on this. The shell is done (I keep reminding myself that, although it looks too intensely bright now, the grout always flattens the colors out a bit) and so are the tentacles (barely visible now in a sea of sketch lines and gobs of old glue) and am starting to work on the background--always the hardest part.
The eye looked really big when it was the only thing done, but now it is sort of lost in the activity. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Fiber Show, Flint MI

People with more energy than I can imagine are organizing a local Fiber Show in downtown Flint for sometime next week (or sometime soon--I can't remember the dates of anything except the upcoming semester that starts in 136.5 hours and counting). I was asked if I wanted to enter anything. Here is a huge piece of felt I made last winter during the felting frenzy of Christmas Break 2008. I didn't have a plan for it then and couldn't come up with anything too imaginative, so it is a shawl--at least for purposes of displaying it in the fiber show. (That weird little circle is just light reflected from something in one of our trees. It looks strange but it isn't part of the wool. No really, it isn't.)

Here is a close-up with a bit of glass being used as a pin to keep it together and on the hanger. Mainly what I want to do is write up a narrative about what a mad scientific experiment felting is.