A Mosaic of Ideas About Life, Art & Superfluous Adornment.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Prodding a Design



"[Your] dream will challenge, prod and haunt you until you surrender to its call."
— Wayne Cordeiro


The newest class at A Work of Art Studio is a T-Shirt Prodded Rag Rug, which was taught by Julie Sullivan @www.Rewovendesigns.etsy.com!  This is a pretty easy and very fun craft to learn. This is  a "Prodder", which is used to "prod" a hole into burlap where you then push a strip of cut up t-shirt or fleece, first one end and then the other. You end up with both pieces of the strip on one side of the burlap, making the rag rug, the other side is a flat design.






Prodder
 Staple burlap to frame after drawing design.
Grab your old t-shirts and cut all the seams out, leaving only smooth fabric to cut for strips.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Cultivate Art

"Cultivate an attitude of happiness. Cultivate a spirit of optimism. Walk with faith, rejoicing in the beauties of nature, in the goodness of those you love, in the testimony which you carry in your heart concerning things divine."


Check out the digitilization of my sketchbook!

The Sketchbook Project has taken pictures of my art journal and they are ready to be viewed. 
Here are a few that I took at the studio before I sent it off...








You can check it out at this address:

Monday, January 23, 2012

A Job Well Done

"It always seems impossible until it's done."
— Nelson Mandela
I have been working on this mosaic project for about a year (two, from the time the client contacted me by email). She googled "tree frog mosaic" and found this picture:
Not a very good picture of it, this was taken from the website http://www.mosaic-tile-
Time to get more current pictures of that original Kitchen backsplash...
Client Kim basically left the design part up to me, saying that she liked everything she had seen of mine; such wonderful trust;)
So, I love the Flora and Fauna and that is what I decided to go with for her design.
 These are the original drawings I made and emailed to her to get her approval; she had sent me templates of the areas to be covered in her kitchen, leaving space for light switch plates and spaghetti pot faucet.


I added a bit of color to part of it to give her a (very loose) idea of some color.
I used stained glass for this mosaic and so the color design changed as I found colored glass to fit certain areas.



This is Kim's kitchen, the picture she sent me to give me an idea of the space. Since there are such vertical lines, I decided to add some horizontal "flow" to the design by having a tree branch move across the space.
Here is the stove section partially done. I worked on and finished all the critters first and then started the branches and flowers. The Michigan "Tulip trees" or magnolias were in bloom last Spring when I was working on the design; that was my floral inspiration. I took several pictures of the trees around my town to copy the flowers and then made my own color design for the mosiac.


 Laying different size pieces to check the background.
 Here is a shot of the branch "flow" to create a horizontal feel in the mosaic.

 Here are the finished panels laid out at my shop.

Taped into a box for the trip to upstate New York.
Here is the corner sink panel glued into place.


 I covered the pieces with clear contact paper for transport and it made it easier to push into place and spread the pressure over the glued back. I have used a cardboard strip before.
I removed the contact paper in bits and pushed to make sure it was evenly glued to the wall.
Once I had it all glued there was a question about the light switch plate. I offered the possibility of covering one with matching mosaic pattern, they took me up on that. I worked on it that night and grouted it the next day. What a difference this plate made to the overall piece.

 I also sneaked my initials into this piece, since I can't seem to remember to do this on a regular basis:(
 The mosaiced switch plate added some dimension to the piece. This is after grouting.
 So happy to have added mirror to the mix, it complements her stainless steel appliances beautifully.




 The overall finished mosaic and the happy owner!
What a super great experience to travel cross country to install this piece.
Onto the next...

Friday, December 30, 2011

The Sketchbook Project and my Musings about it

This is my sketchbook for "The Sketchbook Project", under the title of
"Encyclopedia of" and I chose Encyclopedia of Divinity, which to me is a very open ended topic dealing with spirituality, and I like to think, whimsy. The greatest tragedy, I think, would for the universe not to have a sense of humour about life and all its goings on.

Since I have seemingly been obsessing over angels the last few years I figured I would keep that theme going a while longer. I long for the night when one of my "flying dreams" isn't just flapping as hard as I can while getting nowhere and suddenly turns into one of soaring easily in the sky without having to dodge around power lines and trees.

Divinity: to refer to powers or forces that are universal, or transcend human capacities. 
To refer to qualities of individuals who are considered to have some special access or relationship to the divine.
I love collage and so decided to throw some pages together with some beloved quotes and thoughts about divinity/spirituality/some things of some importance to me.
 What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then? ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
There is nothing more beautiful or peaceful than your sleeping children.

 Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty; Believe me, that Angel's hand is there. ~Fra Giovanni
 Follow your Bliss. ~Joseph Campbell
 Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. ~Henry David Thoreau 
 Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,--loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe
Here with a picture of my 2010 ArtPrize Angel "Luminary"~the Light Bringer.
 You are a volume in the Divine book. A mirror to the power that created the universe.
Whatever you want, ask it of yourself.
Whatever you're looking for can only be found inside of you. ~Rumi

 "Truce"

 The only problem with adding thick and heavy collaged pages into a lightweight sketchbook is that it gets quite thick and, unfortunately, more than half way through, a few of the pages came loose from the binding. I ended up wiring the whole book together and adding a thick string to keep it all together.
 My work table is organized chaos.



 Choice is a divine teacher, for when we choose 
we learn that nothing is ever put in our path without a reason. ~Iyanla Vanzant
 Joy is the serious business of heaven. ~CS Lewis
 I love this quote and wrote it on an overlaying piece of vellum to get the collage and quote together.

 "I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists.
We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy.
We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--
or a goldfish swimming in a bowl.
But we are closest to God in our own soul.
Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life.
In truth, at very rare moments
We can experience that we ourselves are that Divine Mystery.
~Jostein Gaarder
 You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is. ~Will Rogers
Creation is prayer.
To create is to pray. ~Dan Wakefield
Almost done, I have two more pages to add, will show those when they are done, and this has to be postmarked by January 31st.  Then, it will be off on tour with the Sketchbook Project 2012. I will also upload the link to view this online when it is posted on the Arthouse Coop's website.
This has been great fun and seriously time consuming; on to the next project.