Neko, framed, and a little musing.

I have the mosaic back from the framers and I am really pleased with how it came out. I went for the bold option of a red mount board with black metal frame, and it all blends nicely together, especially with the strip of copper that I wrapped around the raw edges of the mosaic.

I would be loathe to see the back of this one, I think it has a certain charm. It's an interesting point to get to - to want people to see what I have done, something that has taken me over five years to reach. I guess it has a lot to do with an emerging confidence, a beginning recognition that effort can pay off with results. There are a lot of great names out there, tremendous mosaic artists - is it really too presumptuous to want to join their ranks one day? I am still a long way off, another five or ten years of work at least, but I think I can aim for that - I don't think it would be worthy of the effort if I aimed for less.

Latest Mosaic

I just finished grouting my latest. It is a Maneki Neko - otherwise known as a lucky cat. He is modelled after one I saw in Japan a year ago. I changed some of the details - the colour of the kimono mainly. The original was a wishy washy colour, and this needed vibrancy - I love strong colour. The eyes were made by adding a little bit of silver dichroic glass to some black glass, and then fusing it in my kiln. A wide mount board will be the next component to sort out, and then a frame. This one took me about 5 hours to make, over a couple of days - he is only 6"x7", but when you are working with little pieces like that it takes a lot of effort to get them where you want them. Even a small change here and there will have a big effect on the final picture. Being a perfectionist I also tend to prise pieces off and start again if I am not happy with how it is going.

I like the soulful look it has.

What I would have liked to have known from the start.

I had a moment of clarity a while back. I realized that making a mosaic isn't about filling the space - it is about using the space. If I was just filling the space it wouldn't matter how I put the tiles down, the shape of the tile or the orientation. I'd just slap something down and move on to the next tile in the pile. One of the things that it took me time and a number of mosaics to learn is that of course these things matter. The tiles can suggest movement, and structure, and emotion, if the time is taken to ensure that the right tile for the space is chosen / created. Looking at the peddlers hat, taken from my Barrow Boy, Hanoi mosaic, the tiles were placed to suggest the downward flow of the typical Vietnamese head covering - I could have filled that space a lot more quickly with some random triangles, but it wouldn't have looked the same. It wouldn't have felt the same.

I fell in love with glass.

My first time was in a cheap bead shop in Leeds. I had done some weaving and made a bag, but it needed something extra. I went looking through the Market and came out with a bagful of brightly coloured glass beads. Guided by instinct, I hadn't chosen a single wood or plastic bead. All were glass.

I ended up staring at the beads and wanting more. It was the colours that interested me most - the rich vibrant possibilities you get with light and transparency. And I still remember my first bead - a mustard coloured tube about a centimetre long.

I sold some jewellery and went straight back to buy more beads.

Some years later, I had the same experience with mosaic tiles. I was working with ceramic tiles and getting frustrated by the lack of vibrant shades, so I decided to use glass for the first time. I invested in a Leponitt wheeled cutter and some glass tiles. It was like stepping into another world. The cutter sliced through the tiles cleanly, and the glass broke where I wanted it to. I keep promising I'll go back to my unused ceramic pieces one day, and perhaps I will - if the world ever runs out of glass.

Not so long ago I got a kiln, and some art glass. I've found that I am drawn to things where I can make a transformation - I used to have a darkroom and loved the magic of seeing a picture appear on the submerged paper. I have taken lye, and fat, and made soap. Melting glass satisfies my need to transform.

It has only been recently that I have started to understand what I want from my craft, and why I do it. I want to paint with glass. I want to take emotion and express it though tesserae, and I want to record the process as I go along. I want to get better.