The one on the left is a fabric collage with iridescent pieces only layered onto it. It came out pretty well.
The "four seasons" one did NOT come out so well. It looks better in the photo than IRL, as the grout was a mess and chipped off before I even got to clean the thing. What the hell? I swear the grout is getting worse each quarter with the flaking off. Sigh.
Ugh, I haven't updated this in over a year? Good god. Uploading pictures is such a pain in the ass that I take them and never upload them.
Anyway, here's what I've been up to lately: my third gallery show is up.
Remember the Summer of Flowers last year that was taking forever to upload? I did finish that and sewed them altogether into a shawl.
My mermaid costume from a few years ago. And I finally did a self-portrait in mosaic.
Mosaics from the last few years. Big thanks to my friend Melinda who actually does woodworking for figuring out how to put backs on them.
And here's the last four years' worth of "ugly" holiday sweaters.
The last batch of ceramics I made that weren't stolen off my patio this year:
Since this year's theme is "Garden of Chaos," one area's dedicated to flowers and the other's dedicated to undersea gardens:
This is called "Octopus's Garden" because there's sixteen octopuses in it. My friends Meg and Jamie contributed to it, and I am ah, still adding pieces onto it because I spent so much time making the first display piece (and then I found boogie boards at a thrift store in Santa Cruz) that I just don't feel quite done yet. Will keep adding more things later.
Last quarter at the Craft Center was the "Quarter of the Octopi," in which people made octopus-themed projects. Here are mine.
Yup, it's an octopus mosaic, of course! zzbob on etsy does great boards. This is a rainbowpus, or perhaps a chakrapus.
I made this as kind of a winning "badge."
This is an octopus overskirt. It took a few redos to get to look right. It's supposed to go with an octopus shirt I ordered but didn't come in time for the party.
This one's a combination: it involves paper collage behind the glass (note flying birds and jewels in the black), plus ceramic cats and stars and moons.
I found that mermaid tail cut as is in the scrap bin and guess what I had to do. The wave at the top and the gold fish were also pretty much cut as is.
I'll show you the rest of this one later...
Another Hawaiian-themed one, with different types of flowers. Orchids on top, plumerias in the middle and hibiscus (attempts) at the bottom. Did two different grouts on it.
This is a mosaic I did last year where the grout just came out terribly. Would NOT come off certain pieces (the joys of textured ones), and it came out weirdly white in places, and just...ugh. So I painted over it instead--pained brown for the tree where it's weirdly white and also painted over the glass pieces. It looks a lot better now.
So in July, I was teaching mosaic class again and got an idea. There's a mosaic artist around here that I love who uses words in her mosaics. I decided to try doing some collage underneath mine instead and work with clear or clear-ish pieces of glass on top of them. Here's the first one I tried, with and without glass atop in the process.
I think it came out very mystical and mysterious. However, note for future reference: if you casually start placing pieces of glass while the paper's still drying, the glass will end up stuck there a bit prematurely! Ah well.
Here's a second experiment at this, using fabric scraps instead:
I grouted this one with two different kinds of grout my students had been trying out, what the heck. You can't really tell in the finished work.
And a third, back to paper again: