Beginner’s Mind №s 1-4 (2015) Each 11” x 9”. Smalti, other glass, stone, mosaic gold.
Last week, I posted that Beginner’s Mind № 2 had sold. Upon receiving it, the new owner was pleased enough with it to purchase the other three as well. That’s pretty darn sweet!
Study in Moderation № 1, in progress
Last week, I was working on another concept for a series of small pieces. I had planned on calling the series Echoes, which was appropriate for the concept. Well, the concept just did not work. Weird. I was very excited about it, but as I started on the design, it just was not working for me.
I immediately shifted to this idea of working with framing spring clips for a series of small pieces. The original concept, though unsuccessful, led to this concept. I’ve been trying to come up with a title but could not, so I am sticking with Echoes for now. Update 7-22-2020: This series is titled Study in Moderation.
After finishing the spring clip and smalti motif (at left), I next needed to decide my andamento. What I did was to take the image at left and import it into my Procreate app.
Then using the app, I cleaned up the background and created a layer to play with a couple of ideas. I settled on a rather classic approach, the result of which you see above. It is just a sketch, a guide. I’m going for something like it but without being too precise.
When I made the piece at right, I had intended to use a looser technique but realized, about 1/4 way through, that I had habitually slipped into a very controlled and precise execution.
I was disappointed but finished it in the controlled and precise manner in which I started it rather than start over.
Although I am happy with this little mosaic, I think it could have been much more interesting had I used a looser and less controlled execution. Or maybe just different. I want to explore different.
A Little Love Story 6.5” x 8.5” | 17cm x 22cm. Marble, travertine, smalti, coral, turquoise mosaic gold.
Although I’ve started with the smalti inside the spring clips being fairly precise, I felt it necessary because the spaces are very small and difficult to work within. I will see if I can be happy with loosening that up in the next piece. But the stone background is where I will really practice less control. Let’s see if I can do it!
Work in progress
Just a little glimpse of the beginning of a new series I’m working on, which is currently untitled. These will be small 6” x 8” pieces featuring framing spring clips and stone. This one has started with smalti inside the clips, but the background will be primarily stone.
I think this will be fun!
In The Beginning, in situ
In my earlier years of making mosaics, I would often start a project before I had it fully developed in the design phase. I was much more impulsive, yes, but there was also an enthusiasm. Impulsive: not so good; enthusiasm: very good. Funny how that works. At this stage in my mosaic-making, I pay much more attention to the design phase. I still have enthusiasm, but it’s not as free and exciting. A trade-off?
All my not well-thought out projects have taught me over the years the value of the design phase. This piece, In The Beginning, was one of those projects. I’ve blogged about others—Past Life being the star of the not thought-out projects. The violet gold that I used on this was the same violet gold that I scraped off of what became Piercing The Veil. When I started this, I think I only had the shape where the violet gold is. As was my thinking at the time: I’ll figure it out as I go.
In The Beginning (2012) 19” x 22” | 48cm x 56cm. Mosaic gold in violet, red, orange, acid green, shades of yellow, vitreous, contorno.
I got stuck on it and set it aside for a while because I did not figure it out as I went. Some time later, I managed to work off of the initial shape. I was shocked, as I was finishing it with the black vitreous, at the male-female symbolism. Where did that come from!?! This was completely subconscious and certainly not a result of intentional design. I admit to feeling a bit embarrassed.
In The Beginning, detail
This was the first time I used vitreous, cut and laid on its side, en masse, and I found it very effective.
When You Left Us (2020) 18” x 20” | 46cm x 51cm. Italian and Mexican smalti, framing spring clips
Previous Posts about this work here and here.
I started this somewhere around 2010. It was smaller than it is now and it was sort of an exercise in working with red. There were some emotional things going on at the time, including the passing of both of our elder dogs just a month apart, and I was pondering matters of the heart. I was also waiting on materials for a large commission and once it got going, I set this aside.
In 2014, I was revisiting this little piece and decided to continue with it. I was thinking that it could be part of my Impromptu Series, but then realized it did not fit the criteria as closely as I wanted. Then, my younger brother passed away unexpectedly. I felt that the initial start on this was rougher than I normally like—it felt sloppy. But it also felt raw and like something I could just work on without thinking too hard about it while I pondered the stuff of iife, like death. I decided to dedicate it to my brother and I called it Fragile Heart.
Again, I abandoned it. My impulse for control and precision left me very judgmental of it. I considered tossing it, but I thought it was intriguing and maybe—maybe—someday I would be able to finish it without judgement.
When You Left Us, detail
Well, it seems that time came a few weeks ago. After finishing A Little Love Story and being disappointed that I had fallen into my controlling habit—I do think it would be a more interesting mosaic if I had applied a looser technique—I was determined to work more loosely and that is just what this piece called for.
When You Left Us, detail
So I finished this 10 year-old mosaic with little fuss. I vowed to not change any of the previous work—although I did end up changing just one piece—and to not stress about the gradation or the precision of my cuts. It still looks raw to me, and I think that is appropriate. It is still dedicated to my little brother, but with the new name: When You Left Us.
Beginner’s Mind № 2 (2015) 11” x 9” | 28cm x 23cm. Smalti, various other glass, mosaic gold
I’m very grateful that this mosaic has found a home! I love the entire series of four and would have been happy to keep them all for myself, but I’m even happier to have sold one of them.
Beginner’s Mind № 1, 2, 4, 3
Not sure if you know this, but blue is my favorite color, and this combo of blues totally does it for me. It’s perfect and delicious and oh so awesome! I like all four of them, but I tend to not like a lot of contrast and the yellow and blue is quite a contrast. I’ve always favored this one.
Beginner’s Mind № 2, detail
May it be happy and loved in its new home.
I’ve created this new cover page for my Facebook Shop button to direct people to either my fine art site or my decorative site. Over the weekend, I added an Available page to my main navigation on my fine art site, making some works available for purchase.
I have a few small pieces, for under $100, and then various sizes and prices from there, and I’m including shipping. Take a look!
Past Life, in situ
Okay, I never thought I would make peace enough with this mosaic to have it on my site, much less use it for a Feature Friday. There is quite a story to this one. Over 20 years in the making! I did so many things wrong on this when I started it and I wanted to just get rid of the thing instead of storing it away for almost 18 years. But the sheer size of it and the fact that I had already glued on that border treatment made it difficult to just throw away.
Originally titled Fullness, I finally decided to finish it in 2018. You can read more about the history and completion of this project here.
Past Life (1998-2018) 60" x 36" | 91cm x 152 cm. Vitreous, slate, jasper, agate, moonstone, snow quartz, prehnite, mother of pearl, celestite, rhyolite, rhodonite, pyrite, copper, ceramic, mosaic gold, other glass.
Past Life, alternate lighting
Past Life, detail
Past Live, detail from side perspective
Past Life, Detail
Activate the Midline, by Lynn Adamo
A Silver Lining is a gorgeous virtual exhibition presented by the Bandon Library Art Gallery and curated by Tracy Hodson. The current situation with the COVID-19 virus has forced what is usually a very strong actual exhibition into an equally compelling virtual one. The above work by the amazing Lynn Adamo is your first clue as to the quality of the work that you should expect to see.
From Curator Tracy Hodson, except from A Silver Lining essay:
I went to Art School to become a filmmaker, and spent 15 years making films until illness ended that part of my life. When, many years later, I fell in love with mosaic art, one of the things I responded to immediately was the sense of community that mosaic artists create around them, a quality this form shares with filmmaking…So this virtual show is in honor of that atmosphere, that sharing environment where we can all grow our work, test our ideas and experiments, admire others and be admired in turn, share laughs about our errors and get ideas about how to fix them, and generally enjoy the company of our fellows in this difficult but wonderful medium. Thank you all for joining in, and making it so easy and pleasurable for me to get the virtual show together. Keep working!
A Little Love Story (2020) 6” x 8” | 15cm x 20cm. Marble, travertine, smalti, coral, turquoise mosaic gold.
Last summer, I found the little heart-shaped coral piece on a Big Island beach. I wanted to make a little mosaic with it when I got home, but I just wasn’t feeling it, couldn’t get into it.
Last week, I got into it.
Alternate lighting
Piercing The Veil, in situ
This mosaic started out as just the center icicle-like shape and a substrate about the width of the top of the icicle. At least half of the shape had been mosaicked in violet gold before I realized my andamento was all wrong. This was another example of me rushing in to get started on an idea that was not yet fully developed. I scarped off all the violet gold and then put the substrate in a closet.
A few years later, I decided to do something with the substrate and the icicle shape. I attached the long, thin rectangle of a substrate onto a larger Wedi panel. Piercing The Veil is the second incarnation of the icicle.
Piercing The Veil (2012) 42" x 32" | 107cm x 81cm. Mosaic gold, marble, travertine, porcelain, ceramic, mother of pearl, quartz, shell, pearls, 24kt gold seed beads, Swarovski crystal. Available.
Prelude, in situ
In another Artroomsapp.com room, this is Prelude, the fourth in my Music To My Eyes series.
Prelude (2014) 17.5" x 13.5" | 44cm x 34cm. Mosaic gold in shades of orange and violet, porcelain, glass. Inspired by Rachmaninov's Prelude in G Major, Op. 32, No. 5. In a private collection.
The background is done in black Cinca, cut into strips and laid on its side. I really like the way it gives an undulating effect, which I think nicely represents the primary theme of the Rachmaninov prelude that inspired this work. With the orange gold, I was trying to express a secondary musical theme which is very lively and bubbly.
Prelude, detail
In The Garden Quietly (2012) 10" x 12.5" | 25cm x 32cm. Marble, smalti, contorno, vitreous, shale.
What a nice way to start the day!
In The Garden Quietly
Interior Frequencies (2020) 46” x 43” | 109cm x 117cm. Each 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30cm. Kismet glass, colored cement. Left to right: Depression, Invisible, Guilt, Hopeless, Self-loathing, Conflicted, Humiliation, Shame, Dread, Rage, Loss, Overwhelmed.
I made a space to hang this work in my studio area. It was a bit of a challenge to work out the measurements. I must have done a good job as they were all in their places on my first try.
Interior Frequencies (2020) 31” x 68” | 79cm x 173cm. Each 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30 cm. Kismet glass, colored cement. Left to right: Depression, Invisible, Guilt, Hopeless, Conflicted, Self-loathing, Shame, Dread, Rage, Loss, Humiliation, Overwhelmed.
Previous Interior Frequencies posts
Several people have asked me why I was just doing negative, or sad, or dark emotions. In trying to answer them, I kept struggling for the proper word for these kinds of emotions because I did not resonate with negative, sad, or dark. What they are is uncomfortable, I realized.
These uncomfortable emotions are more interesting to me than comfortable ones. We don’t have to work to recognize, understand, and navigate our comfortable emotions, like joy for example. In this series, I wanted to examine the color and movement—frequency pattern—of my own experience of these emotions.
Using just vertical lines and color to express complicated emotions was, by the end, very limiting, although at first it was quite liberating.
Generally, as I approached these interior states, I recognized a difference between ones that are more inward, like guilt and self-loathing, and ones that have an outward aspect, like loss and rage. I used shorter lines for the frequencies that are more inward and longer lines for the ones with some outward aspect.
Interior Frequencies № 5: Depression Not having suffered from depression, I worked with my younger daughter to understand how to express it. The ochre spurt just left of center represents a pang of self-loathing, and the one bright yellow spot to the right signifies a brief moment of joy. The very short frequency lines speak to a sense of non-existence.
Interior Frequencies № 4: Invisible My sense of being invisible is that I am there but I feel that people are not seeing me—not seeing the person that I am. Maybe I am just feeling like I don’t belong so I shrink into the background and invite being ignored. Or maybe they are just relating to me as someone I am not and never have been. The frequency lines are short here because feeling invisible is very private and makes me feel small.
Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt Guilt feels green to me. It is an interior state that I try to evade and rationalize. I may be able to intellectualize my way around it for a period of time, but it always comes back, just eating away at me. Short lines represent this very inward and private state.
Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless This one speaks for itself.
Interior Frequencies № 7: Conflicted In my limited experience of feeling conflicted, I’ve found myself going back and forth between two things for which I have equal intensity of feeling. I chose these colors because they feel emotionally pensive to me.
Interior Frequencies № 3: Self-loathing I set out to select the worst color palette that I could mange. I wanted it to be pukey, like vomit, to represent an intense feeling of disgust. I actually found it difficult to create an ugly palette. The frequency iines are relatively short but unrelenting, just like self-loathing.
Interior Frequencies № 8: Shame The colors felt like shame feels. Shame is deeper than humiliation and more than just feeling ashamed. It is an insidious thing that is inflicted by others. It affected my sense of self-worth, of value, of feeling like I deserve to exist. Until it is recognized and understood, it grows and seeps into all other areas of life.
Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread It was difficult to feel the colors of dread, but I eventually chose these and I do find them dreadful. As for the frequency pattern, I experience dread as a feeling that pulsates, retreating into the background and then resurfacing, over and over.
Interior Frequencies № 2: Rage I did not achieve that of out-of-control, blinding kind of rage, but I think this feels more rage-y to me than mere anger. The colors are self-explanatory. The lines are long because rage has a big outward expression. The black in the middle represents my inner state at the time, which virtually does not exist.
Interior Frequencies № 1": Loss I found these colors easy to choose as they feel like loss as I have experienced it. The lines are long because of loss’s outward expression. At the height of it, I feel like I have lost part/s of myself, represented by the missing pieces. This sense continues but diminishes with time.
Interior Frequencies № 6: Humiliation This emotion has both a strong outward experience and inward experience for me. When I feel humiliated, I try to hide it and remain cool on the outside, but inside I feel like the red snake of it is burning me up.
Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed Not sure about the colors. At this point, with this being the last one, I was having trouble feeling the color of overwhelmed. I think several palettes would have worked. Perhaps even more contrasting colors. This state feels like it has an outward expression. For me, it comes on pretty suddenly; maybe it is simmering for some time without me being conscious of it, or it is the immediate onslaught of particular circumstances.
Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30cm. Kismet glass, colored cement.
I never thought it could be so much fun to not keep a line straight!
Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed, side perspective
And so this series comes to an end.
Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30cm. Kismet glass, colored cement.
Why green? I have no idea. It is the color that I associate with guilt, which I did not know until I now. What about you?
Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt, side perspective
The next and last one will be Overwhelmed.
Trashlands: A Meditation on the Earth, Trash, and the Footprint of Artmaking, in situ
This mosaic was inspired by this quote from John Constable:
“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”
It made me start thinking about whether trash could be beautiful. Throughout my mosaic-making years, I have always been interested repurposing things, and I am conscious of the environmental impact of art-making. I’m reluctant to throw things away that are not biodegradable, which has lead me to keep things like used grinder bits and nipper blades, and the spring clips that come with the metal floater frames.
Trashlands: A Meditation on the Earth, Trash, and the Footprint of Artmaking (2012) 18" x 30" | 46cm x 76cm. Marble, travertine, smalti, mosaic gold, jasper, lepidolite, amethyst, ammonite fossil, agate, rhodonite, pink sapphire, turquoise, sodalite, lapis, onyx, glass, hardware, used nipper blades and grinder bits, spring clips. Available.
It seemed natural to incorporate these things into this mosaic and I was mostly happy with how it turned out. I even used an old jar lid for the copper sun. I fretted over that for a few days—to do it or not to do it—and finally relented. Then I regretted it for a few days and pondered how I might remove it without destroying the beautiful round copper gold sun. I finally came to terms with it.
Trashlands, detail. In the lower left is a pink sapphire that artist Sophie Drouin gave me.
Trashlands, detail
Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30cm. Kismet glass, colored cement.
As I am nearing the end of this work, I have the opportunity to view the pieces together and see how they can be arranged to achieve the greatest degree of balance and aesthetic interest. With the last three, I am yielding to a desire for that balance and aesthetic interest in deciding on the colors.
So, I find that as much as I wanted to not be attached to an outcome, I am now being influenced by some kind of desired outcome. Just a little. Also, throughout the process, I so often wanted to use blacks and grays, but I forced myself to try harder to express the emotions in varying colors. Black was a problem for me because of the black background, which I wanted for all twelve.
Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless, side perspective
I’ve got some other musings on the fruitfulness, and/or lack thereof, of this project, which I will share at the end. And I will be happy to be at the end of this project.
Next: Guilt.
Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30cm. Kismet glass, colored cement
Dreadful.
Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread, side perspective
Next up: Hopeless.