Craving stillness

The cardinal is finished, and I am ready to ship it off to it’s new home right after Thanksgiving. I’ve become rather fond of this little bird (cuz every little thing - gonna be alright ) and I will miss him, but he will be cherished in his new home as a reminder to the family of a loved one they lost a few years ago. It’s wonderful to hear the stories that make up the connection behind why someone loves and wants your artwork.

Berry Christmas
12” x 12”
smalti, stained glass, garnet beads and Carrera marble

Prints will be available very soon – I’ll let you know when they are in. Also, this is the design that will be featured on my annual Christmas ornament. Details on that very soon too!

With the rush to finish the cardinal, planning for travel to visit my family for Thanksgiving and my husband’s for Christmas, not to mention preparing for the Holiday Market on December 5, I find that I am craving stillness. I want to sit in a chair and not move. Not even my brain.
I can’t do that, so I figured the next best thing was to make my next project a still life. Not my usual fare, but this will be enough of a challenge to keep the juices flowing. When preparing to stage the still life, the first item I thought of and wanted to include was a basket by an artist friend of mine, Diane McEachen. She owns Brook Village Basketry and has a studio just down the hall from me. I really hesitated to do that, because the prospect of rendering a woven basket in mosaic was pretty daunting. But I think it’s going to work:

In the interest of saving my sanity, I will leave off the wooden beads and the metal bail handle.
I will keep some of the table top and fade it out chiaroscuro style into the background.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving,cardinal,Holiday Market,still life,chiaroscuro,carrera marble,mosaic,glass,art

Flight of Fancy

I have just finished a tiny mosaic for the Johnson City Area Arts Council 12th Annual 4 X 4 Miniature Masterpiece event.
Gawd I hate working small!

Flight of Fancy© 2014 Lee Ann Petropoulos
glass and Carrara marble

Sooooo glad to be done with this. I get a headache just thinking about it.
I have to admit I’m glad to finally find a use for those glass leaves that I have had for about 6 years. They never seemed to fit into anything else.
There will be a reception for all the participating artists at the Arts Council Gallery on First Friday on March 7th, and at the Gala on March 23 at the Carnegie Hotel.
I very much wish I could link to more information for you, but the Arts Council has been underfunded and understaffed, so their website and Facebook page are a bit behind. If you’d like more information about the Gala (which will include a silent auction of other items as well: artwork, lessons, private performances, etc.) please call the Arts Council at 423-928-8229 or email jcarts@mounet.com

Technorati Tags: JCAAC,Johnson City Arts Council,4X 4 Miniature Masterpieces,Carnegie Hotel

A little quickie…..

Get your mind out of the gutter! I meant a quick project! Sheesh.

My son is moving into a house that he and a couple of friends are renting. He’s putting a crazy amount of time and hard work into fixing it up just the way he wants it. It’s an old farmhouse that has tons of charm, but needs some TLC. So the other day he brought me a little occasional table that he received for Christmas several years ago. It had a tile on top that was striped in bright colors of random width. Very 1973, if you ask me. He really didn’t like the top, and since he was working so hard on everything else, I said “sure, I’ll recover that for you!”

So there it is – de-sissified. Black marble and white carrara marble (since he’s a mechanic and loves Formula 1 racing cars, I had to resist the urge to completely turn it into a checkered flag – he is 22, after all!)

Tut tut…looks like rain.

I have yet to grout the piece, which I think I will get done tomorrow, but today I finished placing all the tiles on the response piece to the Diptych Project encaustic. So here for the first time…..the concept:

This is the original encaustic piece by Deb Claffey, my partner in the collaboration. She has actually incorporated some glass in it, in the middle of the piece. I was charged with producing a “response” to this. As I looked at it, I thought of leaves being blown off a tree during a summer storm (since they aren’t colored the way autumn leaves would be). So I felt that what it deserved was a piece to go on the left which added to that impression:

I really wanted the stormy look to be represented, even though my husband argued that the bluish grey in the upper section detracted from the leaves. So maybe that was the wrong choice, but I just felt that the concept would be more evident with the bluish grey. I constructed this of marble, vitreous, ceramic “nano tiles” and polymer clay sculpted leaves. The nano tiles are in the tree, and are 5mm square, or for the metrically challenged among us, approximately 3/16”. And I was insane enough to cut some of them.

Good times.

I’ll post pics again after I grout.

To share or not to share? That is the question.

Hmm – to share or not to share? I have been back and forth with that several times over the last couple of days. I am used to showing you what I’m working on, and whining about discussing the snags and bumps in the road that I have to work through. I think I learn so much more (and remember so much more) by talking it out here on my blog. However, on this project I just feel like waiting until it’s finished is the right thing to do. So pics of the companion piece to the encaustic diptych will have to wait. And maybe longer than you thought – the deadline, I found out today, has been postponed from June 15 to July 15!! I could have made the deadline I’m sure, but now the pressure’s off. But…I have another project I’m anxious to start, so I’d like to finish it up anyway.
Next up is an abstract that I began thinking would be sort of a stylized peacock feather. But the drawing took off in another direction entirely. I really like it – it will be made of marble and Italian smalti, with a bit of gold smalti as well.

And I cheated a little – there’s a tiny peek at part of the diptych project piece in the picture!

Now what do I do for Art Every Day?

I haven’t posted any pics for a couple of days, but that’s not becuase I haven’t been working on this! It’s only because I worked on it until I couldn’t see straight to type. Now I’m fighting the urge to take a nap. I have been so high strung over my deadlines on finishing this piece, that I could just collapse in a heap. As of about an hour ago, the piece was finished, photographed and submitted. Ahhhhh……

	detail of upper right
detail of lower left	detail of ball chain

The ball chain is the stuff you buy at the hardward store to replace the pull chain on your ceiling fan. I don’t know why I think that’s so cool – I guess because it’s so pedestrian an item, and a marble mosaic makes me think of Roman baths or patrician homes in Pompeii.

Honestly? I liked it better before I grouted it. The white veins in the black marble seemed really interesting before being grouted. Now it looks to me like I dribbled the lighter colored grout in the middle of the black. Bummer. But this being the first piece I’ve done in marble, I learned a lot from it. I really love working with it. I love the feel of it, and because I used the thin tiles available from Mosaic Rocks, it cuts well (although the green could be a little unpredictable). God forbid you try to cut the thicker stuff (some of which I got from Mosaic Art Supply) without a hammer and hardie at your disposal! Oy….

Art Every Day – Day 7

YAY ME!

I’m on schedule! Marble is done, now to do the pre-grout sealer, let it dry overnight, then grout tomorrow. There have been no major roadblocks yet – one minor one. Yesterday I stopped at Home Depot to pick up the proper sealer for the marble. (Grout can stain marble if you don’t seal it first) I wanted the type that enhances and slightly darkens the stone. I was pretty sure I knew which one I wanted, but the packaging has changed since I last considered buying it, so I was dithering. An employee came over and tried to help (bless his heart) but he didn’t know any more than I did. He then called over someone else, who then argued me out of the one I thought I wanted. She insisted that I buy a different one (which was WAY more expensive, by the way), so I caved. Guess what? I tested it this morning, and it is NOT the one I wanted. So I have to return that tonight – but no biggie. This is the kind of set back I can handle!

Beer me. I deserve it. :)

Art Every Day – Day 6

So last night after I posted a picture and ate half a carrot cake dinner, I went back to work on the gold travertine. My goal was to finish the gold last night, but I realized at one point that I would be better served to fill in some of the black around the lower acanthus leaf instead. I have no idea why. It seemed like a marvelous idea at the time. Of course today’s commitments took a little longer than expected, so it was 4:00 before I even got started today. I have now finished the gold travertine and it’s time to start dinner. I’ll come back to it again tonight and get some more of the black done, then tomorrow finish the black.

See you tomorrow!

Art Every Day – Day 5

Oohh…..I think I might actually make it. I might make the deadline. Today has been an intensive day in the studio, and I will come back again after dinner to do some more. Tomorrow will be a half day because of prior commitments , so I’d better make hay while the sun shines. (That’s such a Midwesterner’s saying, isn’t it?)

Somehow this photo is pretty distorted, I must have been holding the camera at an angle. Anyway, my goal is to finish the gold travertine tonight. Then with tomorrow’s half day, and all of Saturday, I should have no problem finishing the black background. After the thinset has cured overnight, I can grout on Sunday (which is a bigger deal than one might imagine, unless you’ve done it). Also, I plan to use 3 different colors of grout which is way more time consuming than a single color. So…Monday it can be photographed and the application submitted. Now….universe? You hear me? Don’t throw any roadblocks in my way just for sh*ts and giggles. If I can’t stick to that schedule, this ain’t happening, and baby you don’t want to face me on Tuesday if you’ve derailed me. Huh. So there.

Poppies and Willow

I’ll give you a peek at what’s coming next, if you promise not to make fun of the smeary pencil marks that won’t come off the primed MDF. I drew a loose pencil sketch of what I wanted on the board, then went over it in permanent marker and adjusted some things as I went. Of course I wanted to take a picture of it, so I tried to erase the pencil marks off the areas that were adjusted. Ummmm, for future reference, they won’t come off primed MDF. You can certainly smear them to the point where you don’t know quite where they were originally, but – that graphite ain’t goin’ nowhere!
The design is adapted from a William Morris wallpaper design from 1873.
Oh, one thing I should mention: if you are drawing out a design for a mosaic and are planning to use a white or light colored grout (and of course you always plan all that stuff out, right?) don’t use permanent marker. It will very likely show through the grout in places after you’re done. This will be grouted in charcoal, so I’m not worried about show through.
And the marble piece, Oak and Acanthus, is coming along faster than it seems most of my projects do. Can’t explain it, but I’m grateful to be working a little faster. I get frustrated with being so slow, because I get some great ideas, and if I have to wait to long to start them, I’ll lose enthusiasm for them. Game over - they’ll never get made. In fact, I have one piece that I made a drawing for (just on paper, not on the substrate), and now I’m finding my interest waning. Uh oh. I’d look for a support group for my apparent ADHD but I can’t stay focused long enough.

Meet the Artist – Dotti Stone

Remnant
12” X 12”
Marble and Orsoni Smalti

It’s time again for our monthly featured artist! Our October artist is Dotti Stone from Southwestern Virginia. Dotti is a mosaic artist who has been practicing her art for 5 or 6 years, previously working in stained glass and as a portrait photographer. Along with her mosaic art, she teaches mosaic classes for adults, and workshops and art camps for youths.

Dotti chose this piece to be featured because it is a very different style from her representational works, which include landscapes and portraits. After taking a week-long workshop by Matteo Randi last year, she had been considering the use of marble and smalti and using more abstract design ideas.

Dotti says this piece pushed her outside her comfort zone. Although she had mosaiced other 3D forms such as a guitar, mannequin and spheres, this is the first piece for which she created the form from scratch. Not only was the form a part of her creative process, but when she began working on the form, she had no preconceived idea of what she wanted the end product to look like. Dotti says that her process began when a neighbor gave her some leftover fencing. Her intention was simply to create a somewhat abstract, organic looking form on which to apply the glass and marble. While shaping the wire form, she found that the fencing had some ideas of its own! The fencing wouldn’t hold tight folds, so the form began to take on the look of a piece of fabric.

As Dotti began shaping the wire, ideas for a title floated through her mind, mainly “tattered” and “remnant”. She came to the conclusion that tattered didn’t really fit, but remnant was perfect! Her artist statement for the piece explains what this piece has come to represent for her:

Remnant is like a scrap from the past – a little swatch of fabric from a special dress, coverlet or drapery from a bygone era – perhaps from a mother or grandmother. It’s that little connection with the past that is a storehouse of favorite stories and memories, and maybe a few mysteries. Though the materials are hard there is an overall softness about it with the folds and texture. Some discoloration, some silver threads…a keepsake from the past.

While Remnant stands out as a singular piece when compared to her other works, Dotti says she would love to do more projects in this vein in the future, particularly using smalti and marble. Perhaps even turning “Remnant” into a series!

Dotti feels that her work is moving in multiple directions. While she stretches her creativity with abstract, free form work, she still wants to produce representational works as well. Local scenery is often the subject of her mosaics, which she believes can strike a chord with viewers. Meanwhile, she has another mosaic portrait in progress and hopes to do more. Dotti says that for some time she had been nagged by the belief that she had not developed a “uniquely distinct” style. But she has come to realize that certain common threads run through all her work, for example the preciseness and detail inherent in all her pieces.

Please be sure to visit her website at Smith Mountain Lake Mosaics to see her complete portfolio. She can also be contacted at dotti@smlmosaics.com or dstone540@embarqmail.com.

Dealing with a headstrong project

Somehow this Oak and Acanthus project just didn’t want to be created in glass. I put vitreous glass up next to it, stained glass, Van Gogh glass, recycled glass….it snubbed them all. What’s a girl to do? I have no choice when the project rebels except to go along. So….having ALWAYS wanted to do a piece in marble…I asked it if marble would do, and it said “very nicely, thank you”.

The Wedi is prepped and drying (with a skim coat of thinset) and the marble is on it’s way. Let’s see if you can picture it…

First a reminder of the sketch - (hard to see, I know, but remember my photography disability? Don’t tease!)

And then the marble (from Mosaic Rocks and Mosaic Art Supply – awesome selections, check them out!):

Now let’s throw in a little ball chain:

I hear you. You want to know what on earth I’m going to do with ball chain. Now where’s the fun in that? You’ll just have to stay tuned to this same Bat Channel, same Bat Time…..