Day Thirty Two

I have been away a lot this week and have not had much time for the mosaic. But this afternoon ... ahhhh... I put the last white piece in. Now I have the upper terra cotta wedge to do and the grouting can begin.

Day Thirty Two

Back to work on the mosaic at last!
I filled in the rest of the background on the right panel. When I snipped and glued in the last tiny triangular cut to enhance the curved line of the green leaf and stepped back, I felt like I had put in the last piece of a puzzle. Even though I still have more pieces to set in, the areas in the design still lacking tiles are all white areas. Ta da! SO far so good, if I do say so myself. Yet...
The surface looks broken and a bit too lively. The grouting, not yet begun, should solve that problem.
My son Tim came home from college and saw the wall for the first time. He loved running his hand over the surface. Doing so is a very satisfying tactile experience, much like the general feeling of pleasure derived from running the hand over a good piece of weaving on a loom or the surface of a bead-weaving piece. Organized bumps. Ah!
My two friends Bob and Sue stopped by and took a look too, from outside the greenhouse.

May Sewing and Beading

I finished the jacket, shown above on my dress form that is a petite. On Sue who has a longer waist length, the jacket sets differently....She will wear it with an off-white linen bias-cut dress and a long thin chiffon scarf...tomorrow!
All the mosaic tiles have arrived - I can't wait to finish up the mosaic, but I still have a few sewing projects to move out of the workroom before next week. It will be a busy day again for me.

More May Sewing

Yesterday reminded me of working in a costume shop under time pressure for an opening! The jacket is nearly done. By 6:30 I was ready for a final fitting before I put in the buttonholes and do the finishing. I picked up the mess on the "cutting room floor" had a glass of wine, a hot bath, a little supper, and watched "An Education" - I recommend it. My friend who will wear the jacket came in the morning for a first fitting and took the trim to fray it out. I am not sure she wants me to share the details of her own dressmaking project, but she is making a linen dress to go with the jacket. The wedding is this Friday.

More May Sewing

My workroom is bursting with the puzzle pieces of partially put together garments.
I did not have the energy to work on the mosaic before dinner at all. I decided that until I reach this week's sewing goals I will not be in the mosaic mood. My hope is that Friday afternoon will be mosaic time.

May Sewing and Beading

The replenishment tiles arrived today, but I am so thick in sewing and designing clothes and beading that I was not able to make any progress with them. I am hoping to have very productive mornings and early afternoons over the next few days so that I can get to the mosaic each day for about two hours before dinner.

I finished the necklace to go with the dress seen below, a mother-of-the-graduate outfit. I took on an additional new project - a pink satin jacket - that I may or may not finish in time for a FRIDAY THIS WEEK wedding.

If it is not done in time, my friend for whom this effort is inspired, will wear it to another wedding in late June. There are several other clothing projects in the pipeline for this week. I will be a very busy becky today and for the next three days. Saturday will be given over to my concert with the Bach Society. I will have rehearsals Thursday and Friday evenings, and Saturday morning. At least the garden has been taken care of for the time being. Beans, squash, cucumbers, lettuce, and lisianthus, all planted, and daffodils deadheaded.

May Sewing and Beading

I am in a break from the mosaic while I wait for supplies. It is a good thing because the weather is perfect for getting the garden in, and anyway MAY IS A CRAZY MONTH! I have a lot of sewing to do for customers, what with weddings and graduations one after the other. Plus I have to think about my own clothes -  my eldest son will be graduating from business school (HBS) and there will be a few events I don't want to look too shabby for.

Seen above is a necklace (in process) for me, and below is a dress with a shirred elastic bodice, for a customer - it is a great design -  a knock off I did. She has one that she loves and wanted more. Lucky for me to have the opportunity to copy it! She has ordered two. I am thinking of making one for myself  in a black pinstripe rayon for the graduation. Anybody else interested? It fits any number of figure variations like a glove.

Day Thirty One

I did what I could using the whites that remain. I had put aside smaller cuts because I knew that working into the central motif area would be "puzzling". I decided to use the iridescent whites - my rarest tiles - in fanning out lines from the center, and in bits along certain of the black lines to not only echo and accent them, but also to create subtle lines leading the eye unawares up through the whole design and out into the arch and beyond in rays.
My replenishments should arrive soon. I have been just sitting and contemplating the options for the wedge above the rectangle. Right now I am thinking three things will happen: 1. I will use the adobe tiles to emphasize a tall rectangular shape to echo the doorway; 2. I will insert a design motif in the upper right corner, perhaps a sudoku-inspired square as a sort of signature; and 3. I will run a black line along the top of the gray and white band to set it off. Apropos the black line, I may also make an edge along the central vertical door echo.

The hand tool tile breakers finally arrived -  a little late, but they may come in handy when I work in the new white tiles in the central motifs. I had the idea to cut big fitted pieces (stained glass style)  rather than take the small bit puzzle piece approach (opus incertum). In the photos, which I took at side angles to show the dimensions and variations in the tile placements, the newly completed white fill and the as-yet-unfinished areas are seen clearly. The light shines a lot off the iridescent whites.

Day Thirty

It's been a month on the mosaic. I can see the end in sight. Today I attacked the whites, the tiles of which I had the largest supply. What a shock to realize as I was about halfway through that I had used up more than half of the supply! It hit me that I need to replenish the whites, too. I gritted my teeth and attempted to at least complete the arch, which I did though I had to rummage for bits and pieces for the last spots. I had experience in this with the "adobe" color yesterday. I ordered eight more "white spectrum stained glass" from KP Tiles for $27.30 including shipping. It is amazing to me how the design swallows up the background colors. I have lots of reds, yellows, orange and the very bright pale mint green, but everything else is down to the dregs. If there ever is a next time, I will be wiser.

I completed the meandering stem. This view shows an area where ALL TILES are in!

Day Twenty Nine

I have just about run out of the "calfskin" tiles for the panel background number two on the right. I hope UPS brings me the replenishing supplies tomorrow! Then I had to squeeze out the "adobe" fill at the center base - I barely had enough! I was down to rummaging through the cut and waste scraps. What a thrill when I found two stuck together "adobe" tiles off to the side. It made my day!

Day Twenty Eight

I realized after today's session was over that I will not have enough "camel" - or is it "calfskin"? -  to complete the two panels. I had a consult with Milos about the upper triangular wedge above the design and we concluded that I should order enough tiles to fill the area above too. We had been thinking we could use the regular Elements Yttrium tiles for that, but realize the 1/4 inch thickness would be troublesome. I ordered a replenishing assortment (cinnamon, camel, brick, calfskin and adobe) of earthy colors in ceramic tiles from Mosaic Art Supply for about $50 including shipping.
I felt a bit rushed today and had a little trouble with calm and focus, realizing how I usually take my state of mind for granted. I shouldn't! I am not burning out at all, but I think maybe taking the day off on Mother's Day got me out of flow! I also spent the morning starting and not quite finishing three very focused and demanding pieces of jewelry. Maybe I was just tired!

Below is the custom jewelry ensemble, which I finished after dinner. I used copper wire as a foundation then sewed plundered gems and beads and nifty coiled wire leaf motifs from the fabric and added some beads of my own, and the findings. The earrings and necklace are intended to be worn with a dress made from the fabric. I had shortened it for a friend/customer and we planned the jewelry together, using the heavily bejeweled and embroidered remnant from the hemming as inspiration and "shop"!

Day Twenty Seven

Here is a close up of one of the eight opus quadratum motifs I am setting in the corners of the flower panels to illustrate the challenge of getting the cement thickness right and keeping the mess under control. I had to clean up the cement quite a bit on this one - my third. By the time I got to number eight the mess was a bit less morbid.

Here the left flower panel has all the square motifs in place.

All eight square motifs are in place.

Next I filled in the brown opus vermiculatum in the triangular areas above the arch called 

SPANDRELs.

The day's work done! I spent about 6 hours in the greenhouse today tiling and listening to the rest of The Writer in the Garden (edited by Jane Garney) and starting in with Oxygen. I was achy afterwards and settled down on the sofa with a beer and a bowl of popcorn to watch a movie. The weather was on again off again rainy and sunny, windy, humid, chilly. I chose the Japanese film DEPARTURES. Excellent - the best movie I have seen in a long time! I strongly recommend it! But have a box of tissues handy.

Day Twenty Six

Working on the wall presents the challenges of
1. comfortably fitting and nipping pieces to fit niches in the layout and
2. handling the cement without getting overly messy.
     I haven't quite figured out the ideal thickness of the layer of cement I need to spread. If I spread it too thin the tile barely adheres and might drop off if I bump into it accidentally, and if I spread it too thick, when I press on the tile, the cement oozes up around the edges and I have to wipe it away. The grout has to have a groove to set into. I don't want bits of glue exposed. Also, although I tried to buy tiles of relatively uniform thickness, the variability is undeniable. A millimeter more or less makes a difference with the glue. The ideal is to have a little ledge ooze around the tile back into the gap, to create a mini-ledge, but not to have it ooze beyond the surface. Fat chance. I have taken to dabbing with my damp towel to remove the excess ooze and smoothing out blobs with my fingers. Once the tiles have set an hour or so, I go back and wipe a bit more. The cement is still able to be wiped off, but the tiles don't shift much. I hope in a day or two I will have the cement spreading perfected!

     The nipping now is working fine after an uncomfortable hour with the ladder set up too high and my crouching in awkward postures that made me feel old and put my feet to sleep. I readjusted our special ladder (a Milos purchase from years ago) that can be locked into a few different configurations, and I procured boards from Milos to lay across the supports. I was able to set my cutting box on one ledge and I can sit on the opposite side or stand on the boards, stand on the steps or wherever I need to be to reach the area I am working on. The set-up blocks the entrance and I have to squeeze around to maneuver in and out of the room, but once I am ensconced, I am very happy. I like the way I created the square motifs today with the red glass circles. I also finished setting in the light green and gray rays in the white banding. I had the windows open and the air smelled of lilac and honeysuckle. I listened to the radio, but soon tired of the trials and tribulations of economic and environmental degradation. I put in a tape from the Chatham Library - witty English garden stories.
    I wanted to lay strips of bright green, but found the cutting too painstaking and difficult without hand tile cutters - this necessary tool has yet to arrive by UPS.

Day Twenty Five

Just as I was cruising on the elation stream, joyful to be in the Wall Era, the amount of untiled area hit me. I discovered there is still a lot more to do. Although I was thinking I would grout in with the brown grout on the flower and leaf motifs before laying the white backgrounds, I realize that I will lay all tiles and then grout after all. This means I could have worked flat longer...perhaps. The one benefit of laying the tiles vertically is that I can get back and see the whole and how the various sections relate to one another. Even though the backgrounds will be predominantly laid opus quadratum and opus tesselatum, I want to reserve the option of getting free with the tiles if it seems right. This I can only know with the entirety clear before me. The design is full and active, but I don't want it to be so busy it overwhelms the small space. There should be a sense of calm as well. I want to push the limits as much as possible to give the mosaic life! Too orderly is deadening, too free is unpleasing to the eye. I need to find the sweet spot.

Today I focused on laying down the boundaries of the structure of the design. I ran out of my greens and had to go with gray ceramic, which is the same color value as the green vitreous tiles, the gray seen in the two vertical lines, on to the right and one to the left of the arch. I really enjoyed the "rays" of color in the arch "white" zone. I spent about four hours tiling today. I finished listening the The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. I appreciate her historic inventiveness. The strange thing is that her narrative really comes from a similar wellspring as my own as yet unpublished juvenile fiction novel The Moon in the Morning. Anyone who would read my novel would conclude I was very influenced by The Red Tent, but the fact is I never read it or knew much about the book until now. I saw it in the library in Book-on-Tape form, remembered my friend Teresa had liked it and recommended it, and figured it would make good listening-while-tiling material. In the Moon in the Morning, a character tells the story of Rachel. In Diamant's story the narrative comes from Dinah, Rachel's niece, and Rachel is an important character in the novel.  In my novel, other myths, such as the story of Cupid and Psyche are also retold as part of the wider narrative. Isis, Brigit, Arachne, and Athena among others also enliven the plot.

Day Twenty Four

The Wall Era Begins.

The Mosaic is starting to feel like a reverse archeological discovery as I piece together the segments and try to picture the way it "was" intended. The Mesh Era is over. Now I am moving into the Wall Era.

Day Twenty Three

The final motif sheets are done! I intend to lay all the rest of the tiles directly onto the wall. The motifs are the more inventive and free-wheeling opus vermiculatum forms. The rest of the tiles I will lay opus quadratum and opus tesselatum - that is, in a grid either staggered as in bricks, or aligned as in graph paper. There will be a few exceptions, such as the vine-like green stem that graces the left side and top white band, and the terra cotta and white fill in the central area in and around the arch. The next tiles I start to work in are the connective tissue uniting the motifs and I believe to do it all justice I have to work on the totality of the image from this point on.

Day Twenty Two

22! It has been over three weeks since I began documenting this project. I am hoping to finish before June. My plan is to work every afternoon for about three hours - or longer if possible. I have a lot of sewing work all of a sudden!

The green house is very pleasant in the afternoon when the sun doesn't flood the room too directly with light. When the light is too bright it is harder to see the balance of colors because there is excessive glass reflection on the table.

Day Twenty One

The fun is finally beginning.There are minor irritations when tiles pop off the mesh as I bring it to the wall for placement. I trim around the tiles to create as tight a unit as possible and mark around the circumference with pencil so I  know where to spread the cement.I press on each tile to get good contact. The cement bumps through  the mesh.

I wipe off excess as much as I can and use a damp cloth to keep the mess under control.