Auburn Community Mosaic Mural

Last spring, I saw a call for art that involved facilitation of an art project for the Auburn Parks & Rec's new "ArtRageous Art Zone."  It hasn't been easy to find opportunities to do more community mosaic since the Artesian Well project, so I submitted a proposal to lead a mural-making project.  The finished product would be donated to a non-profit organization chosen by the City of Auburn.

I received notice that I was approved to lead the project, but I found it difficult to get more information.  Apparently, the ArtRageous Art Zone is a new program, and it was yet to be seen who would come to the planned events.  On various dates throughout summer, entertainment and interactive art projects would be available in Les Gove Park, open to anyone who wanted to participate.  By July, a location for the mural had not been identified for certain, though there is a blank wall on one of the buildings in the park, perfect for mounting the mural, so that was being considered.

My design, therefore, was a simple landscape featuring Mt. Rainier (as seen from Auburn) and some NorthWest-looking plants.  Without knowing how many participants would come or what age range they would be, I decided to try to make it as easy as possible, though it meant a lot more work on my part.  I outlined the mountain and clouds with mirror, and made outlines representing the low mountains at the base of Mt. Rainier.  Then I completed the ferns, leaves and flowers myself, using the boldest shapes I could manage.  After all, the stipend for this project was quite small, and I had a commission with a steep deadline to complete at the same time.  Here is how the mural looked before I took it to Auburn:

3' x 5' mural, prepped and ready for kids to fill in the empty areas.

Sorted scrap stained glass was set out in bins - only 4 colors to keep it very simple.  Two Seattle mosaic artists, Kathryn Henne and Christina Vaule, came to volunteer, and it would have been sheer chaos without them.  As it turned out, the live band that played on a nearby stage was the Roly Poly Guacamoles and most of the kids in the park that day were preschoolers.  We did have a few older kids, but most of the work was done by very little hands who often had a very hard time even understanding that certain colors needed to go in certain areas, let alone how to place pieces so that they fit together nicely.  Thinset was dripping and glopping everywhere, lots of areas had pieces of glass overlapping or pressed together without space for grout, and at least one kid wanted to stack the glass, gluing pieces one on top of another.  It was all I could do to keep up with thinset mixing and going around adjusting and cleaning up areas after they were abandoned by each child.  Most of the kids were from daycare groups, so adults were not able to help them out - which I did not anticipate!  I was very impressed and utterly grateful that Kathryn and Christina were awesome with the kids, showing them how to dab the right amount of thinset onto a piece and strategizing where each piece should go.

Here, two older girls are working independently while Christina gets 3 newcomers set up.

This mom was awesome, making sure her kids followed directions.  

None of us took time to stop and take photos during the busiest part of the day, but we often had kids wrapped all the way around the table, and it was very hard to keep up with all of them.  The lesson I learned is that, in future, I will not be so ambitious.  While I really wanted this project to be a mural, it was mainly out of self-interest.  It will make a nice addition to my portfolio, showing how community mosaic can bring people together and contribute to the beautification of cities within a limited budget.  So, I'm glad I did it, but I now know to only do these large projects in a more controlled environment.  There should be a minimum age or required adult supervision, and possibly advanced sign-up or limited space at the table.  

Earlier in the summer, I did two other group projects.  One was with a church group of 60 participants and I had no volunteers.  But there were parents and grandparents, and the project was a very simple, small mosaic on wood using water-based glue.  Another was similar, but at 4H camp with kids in 3rd grade and up.  Both of these were very successful, low stress, fun for participants, and everyone got to take their project home.  If I had it to do over, I would have done that for the ArtRageous Art Zone.

However, with the help of family, the mural was finished at home over the past couple of weeks.  (I needed unskilled labor so that it would all blend together.)  Today I grouted, and I think it's a very cute mosaic project that, hopefully, will be mounted in Les Gove Park in Auburn, WA sometime this month.  The children who helped create it will be able to see it every time they visit the playground, and point to the area they worked on.  Who knows, maybe they will be able to show it to their own kids someday.

Mosaic retrospective

I was asked to return to The Evergreen State College to deliver a lecture presentation about my work.  I did this last year for the same class, but different students.  This year, I decided to tell the story of my work from the beginning, demonstrating my slow learning process, and how attention to andamento has influenced my style.

While going back through old images, I was shocked to realize how rudimentary my technique was only a few years ago.  I also recognized that I have learned to make mosaic the same way I've learned everything: a little bit backwards.  In art classes, I always infuriated the instructor by jumping ahead.  They give the class some clay and ask us to begin by creating a coil bowl, but I'm already sculpting a figure.  But, my figure breaks in the kiln because I didn't work the clay correctly, and during the next session, I want to know how to make those coil bowls.  My learning process is to rush in and make mistakes, and THEN follow directions.

So it has been with mosaic.  Granted, when I began in 2000, the internet was new.  There was no youtube or tutorials online and I was just learning to use my big monster tower computer, and I may have found a few photos of mosaic on the internet, but nothing like the vast amount of information available now.  So, I was just busting up tiles and sticking them onto wood panels with mastic (which is all wrong, by the way.)  When I was given a big box of scrap stained glass, I didn't even know how to cut it.  Here is one of my first pieces:

Yes, I was so proud of this, a friend helped me put a title and watermark over the image and he posted it online for me.

As I've been collecting images for the powerpoint I'll be showing to this class, I keep seeing work that I once thought was really great.  And I still like the designs I created - I just had no clue about how to place the pieces to create a sense of flow and direction.  They are choppy.  I put pieces where they fit.

Now, this Blue Moon mosaic isn't bad, if you ignore the odd grout lines.  You can see that I was trying to use light and dark pieces for shading, but the placement of tesserae is a mess.  Now, I feel compelled to go back to my old work and re-make them using skills I've since acquired.  I think I would start with this one.

It was a relief to come to this point in my work, where I am finally starting to "get it."  There are a couple of things I would change about this, mainly in the face, but I have at least begun to be more careful about my placement of glass, making sure the grain of the pieces moves in the direction of the flow, and the keystoning radiates out from the central of the spirals.

Gypsy Rose, designed by Marco Hernandez

I really see my progress in this mosaic.  I played with different styles of andamento, cutting solid shapes for the roses, placing pieces randomly in the face and scarf, and using a more classic andamento for the background.  I think this is from 2010, so it took me 10 years of doing mosaic to start to understand how to make mosaic that is controlled and appealing to the eye.

Now, in 2011, I took a class from Carol Shelkin, and I've been playing with the techniques I learned from her.  Since I use small, odd-shaped pieces of salvaged stained glass, I'm not patient enough to cut each piece into little squares.  BUT, there is still some serious control taking place within what appears to be a random mess of colorful pieces here.  Without my past experience, I'm not sure I could have made good use of Carol's instruction.  And, I'm still learning.  In five years, I expect I'll be using these more recent examples to show all that I was doing wrong in 2013.  I can only hope so.