what’s goin’ on : general stuff

// December 12th, 2013 // Current projects, News

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I’ve been keeping busy assisting with my local community mosaic group for a few hours each week… working on my smaller projects at the mosaic group when I can as well as mosaic projects for the group, although most of the time I end up helping out with this or that and putting my almost 8 years experience of making mosaics (and many more years experience with computers & other techie stuff) to good use, answering questions and helping where I can. I enjoy my time there, not only for the interaction with other mosaic artists of various skill levels ranging from beginner to experienced, but also the friendship that the group has been very good at nurturing… so kudos to the mosaic group’s founder, Dianne Little for succeeding in creating a group where people on the Southern Moreton Bay Islands (SMBI) can come to learn how to make mosaics for the community and also create new friendships.

My larger mosaic projects stay in my studio throughout construction, which is much easier than moving them around, and I am gradually setting up and adapting my workspace to accommodate my not entirely unique requirements. That’s not an easy feat, as just the changing variables of my injuries have taken time to learn and understand how to work with, but I am making headway, sometimes by trial & error and sometimes by good research/planning or just using my brain for one of the purposes it was intended… commonsense! I figure that if I can fix mobile phones and computers (which I did for previous jobs), I can do almost anything as long as the physical requirements aren’t beyond my limits!

So there has been plenty to do to set up my studio, and lots of gardening too which I also enjoy, albeit in small doses to keep my pain levels to a minimum. The one thing I can do most of the time, is sit and cut tesserae for future mosaic project, using mosaic glass cutters or tile cutters depending on the material. All in all, the last few months have been an interesting part of my life’s journey, and so it continues…

Currently I have 2 mosaic projects in my studio:
“Night watch” – a pictorial with cats in a tree. I have emphasised the eyes of the cats, to give the impression they are watching something, and also to the stars to convey night time. I’ve had this project packed away between moves, but now have the space to work on it.

The other mosaic is for a wall fountain (no title yet). This project has evolved since the glass background panel was broken both times I have moved since beginning the fountain. I was recently given a small fibreglass pond, which I wasn’t sure if I’d incorporate with the fountain as I had planned to use a half kerosene type drum as the water reservoir. Then, shortly after I began looking for a suitably sized wediboard panel, the husband of a friend from the mosaic group found two panels large enough to incorporate the pond and delivered them to my door… what a surprise that was, and I am so thankful! Not only has it saved me the hassle of getting the material transported from the mainland, it has also allowed me to radically change the background substrate to a torsion box type, double skinned structure (think “hollow core door”) which will be much stronger and will also allow me to hide the plumbing inside the structure.

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