5-day Ravenna technique class: chicken and rusty #2

I can't get enough of Michael Krizich's classes, and can't recommend him highly enough.  You've still got time to register for one.

 Here are 2 stone pieces I made while learning the Ravenna technique (hint:  it involves rabbit hide glue - steenky!)  All pieces were cut with the hammer and hardie.  The chicken is a reproduction of a Roman mosaic.   Rusty #2 is an abstract and is still in progress:

3-day class with Michael Kruzich: the eye and the round

In a fantastic 3-day class with Michael Kruzich (who teaches out of his studio!), came this smalti round gradient study:

...and this stone and smalti eye:

 

 All the pieces were cut with these tools.  The chisel in the log is called a hardie.  It had better be.

 

Rust Never Sleeps

Here's something I made for an invitational exhibition at the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland:

It showed from early February 2012 through early April.

What i've been up to in the last year. And a half.

Kelley Knickerbocker, mosaic artist extraordinaire, designed and fabricated this window for my boat:

I got to assist, and I learned a lot. It's grouted in black now and looks fantastic.  Here it is on Kelley's site.  If you've got any kind of mosaic project in mind, give Kelley a call.

Two arresting images...

...at least for me. The first is the pattern the leaves left on the sidewalk on Welch Road in Palo Alto; The second a stone wall I became enamored of. It's the A'Roma Coffee Roasters building in the Railroad Square area of Santa Rosa.

My cell studio

I challenged Krix to post pics of his painting "sauna," which means I owe him pictures of my workspace. Caling this 11/12 foot windowless, airless, storage space a studio seems catastrophically inaccurate. But, it gets the job done in every season except winter, when I move into a table in my office. Which makes it very difficult to concentrate on work...





≈

White glass panels on plexiglass

My latest project is a doozy: 4 panels approximately 9-/2 by 22-1/2 inches that I'll be installing on track in the window well (below). The brief: Allow light and airflow while creating privacy. Make it easy to clean, incorporate the white of the window frame and as well as the rectangles. I'm using a plexiglass substrate, which is new for me and Lexel to glue the stained glass and vitreous tile. I made a tiny model of one panel in a recent class with Sonia King, teacher extraordinaire:



I can't set the exact size of the panels until I find the track system I'll use, and I can't do that until I find out how thick the plexi needs to be. Then, I've got to replace that oak window sill, which is wrecked from years of diesel soot. I've got a piece of vertical-grain douglas fir just waiting for a sunny couple of days, which I hope happens this week. The trip to Tap plastics is planned for tomorrow, and then to a hardware store for the track.

After all that, I will be all out of excuses.