This piece was meant to be a fun little diversion. After I finished Stabby, I wanted to just play with some of my back yard shale—the 8 large pieces of stone— and some special stones—5 small rocks— that were gifted to me by a fellow mosaic artist.
The large shale piece in the lower right of the mosaic cracked as I was cementing it in place; however, only the topmost layer of it cracked. The crack was too rough to leave it, so I played with spreading it a little bit. This created the crevice. If you look at it closely, you can see that although it looks like two pieces, it is actually a single piece.
As I contemplated what to do with the crevice, it seems that Kilauea's activity on our family's favorite and much-visited Hawaiian island called to me. Before that, I was just going to use green shades of smalti for the piece.
Homage To Kilauea, in sunlight, with some reflection
Homage To Kilauea, detail
I just happened to have some red/orange/yellow scraps from previous projects, as well as some blues, so I decided to rely on scraps as much as possible. As it turns out, I only put a dent in the red scraps.
As I worked, I began paying more and more attention to the andmento. This turned out to be the most challenging thing I have attempted—andamento wise—since Giulio Menossi's portraiture classes.
The flow areas around the large shale pieces average an inch or less, so the smalti is cut quite small. What started out as a fun little diversion turned into a multi-week, serious technical exercise. Ugh! How did this happen? Why can't I just play? And, another familiar refrain: What was I thinking???
I ended up reworking a few areas that were done earlier, of course, because I just couldn't let it go, could I? It was very difficult to flow the smalti around a couple of areas in the shale pieces and the stone obstacles—a.k.a. land masses and islands, and there are a couple of areas that I'm still not completely happy with, but I'm calling it done!