Tree Of Life is Finished!

Grouting was hard. Each leaf had pieces that needed to be revealed individually. Some will be forever embedded in the grout because they were too small or flat. But they are there! 
Here are some of the descriptions people gave with the piece they offered:

Broken porcelain from Pt. Isabel Dog Park

Broken eyes glasses, seeing clearly how fragile we are

Vase made by a glass-blower who knew the fragility of her work, but wouldn’t let the vase go as a gift to someone…brokenness

Bits and pieces of the ancient inhabitants of the Mediterranean and North Africa

Unglazed handle is from Ephesus and probably came from the water jug St. Paul used to quench his thirst after he preached to the Ephesians

Curved, triangular grey mottled piece from behind the big cathedral at Marsielle

Little dark-green shard from the grounds of an ancient Moroccan mosque.  Green is a sacred color in Islam.

One of a pair of earrings from my mother

Pieces of love, laughter, happiness

Pieces representing pieces from the broken bowl my mother made- a life-long potter…I eat from her works daily

To be able to put the pieces touched by fear, frustration, impatience, disappointment and putting them together in the moment and speak them in love

A gift from my students

Broken flaming chalice made by a potter friend of the family from Oklahoma

An earring from Grandma Marilyn, the other lots

Pieces of the ocean so dear to us

Beads from Africa

Gem-stones represent gifts of love from our children.  Now they will forever be tokens os love with & for this congregation.

I can’t drink from this anymore; the handle is gone; this is about my not drinking anymore

The treasure of memories, love present, love withdrawn, experience, sadness, all these pieces make us deep and gain understanding

A UUCB church plate rescued from the trash, meals shared here such an important part of our lives

Little deer our daughter thought she couldn’t live without, now it is broken and forgotten, but she lives on happy far away in Mexico…

Here is the tree in situ.

Here is the way it will look, approximately, after the wall is painted.

Tree Of Life

Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
See more here
and here 

126" x 96"

August 2011

River of Life Mosaic Project Begins

This is the third mosaic project I have led at the Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California. These folks are getting to be real pros at this!

 The theme for the latest mural is River Of Life. I was offered a second story wall over a breezeway area that is approximately 247 square feet. As you can see in the picture, there are stairs on the right side. So I designed the "River" to begin up in the left hand corner and trail off down to the right hand lower corner. I will be working on scaffolding. Not my favorite thing but I have done it before and this scaffolding has stairs and is very sturdy.

The Co-Ministers, Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway, wanted to do a series of sermons on spiritual practice. Their theme was "8 Stepping Stones on the Spiritual Journey: Show Up, Practice, Grow, Serve, Go Forth, Give, Create and Love". And therefore there are 8 stones in my river design.

 A simple idea and a simple design. But I knew I wanted to challenge this congregation with a little more difficult production than last time. I wanted to make the leaf-making for the Tree of Life mural seem like arts and crafts. The total size of the design is about 110 square feet. I always design on my computer and have it printed out full size. The above picture a partial view of the art. Each section is labelled, numbered and named. For this project I cut each section out, prepared it for mosaicking on mesh and arranged each section by color. Below is a photo of the pile of pieces ready to go:

The congregation had again donated all kinds of tessarae for this project. And it was my job to divide them up by color and texture and call out which colors would go on which sections of the mural. Each box, in photo below, is labelled to correspond by color with specific  sections of the mural.

So far there there have been two workshops - each held after the Sunday service. This Sunday is the last one and I only have a few odds and ends for them to finish. 

My goal was to have people working together on these larger pieces - using only the tessarae that was right in front of them. People worked shoulder to shoulder. I wanted to control the flow and blending of the color of the "water" as it flows down and around the "rocks". 

 This is a TOTAL experiment for all of us - me included. When these pieces are cut apart and worked on separately, it is very hard to know if my idea is coming together or not. So I have to rely my organizing skills and then just move ahead on a wing and a prayer! Here are the finished pieces, cut apart, organized by section and ready to be installed:

I am also making mosaic pieces myself out of the more special tessarae, like jewelry, watches, rings, gemstones, etc.

All in all there might be about 90 sections I will be installing. It sounds daunting but I am excited to get started and to see if my vision of this mural can come true!

Mosaic Tree of Life for the Unitarian Church of Berkeley, CA

I want to share this project with you all because it is 
very sweet and profound. 

I am in the process of creating a mosaic tree for the Unitarian Church in Berkeley. They contacted me last Spring with an idea - to have their congregation create a mosaic together. The ministers there are Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway. 
Their idea for this mosaic started with these thoughts:

"Unitarian Universalism brings together pieces of wisdom from world religions, science, poetry, personal experience to create a whole that is beautiful. Each person contributes their unique piece to add to the whole. Out of our broken pieces, together we create beauty."

Starting in June, Barbara led a series of sermons about the nature of healing our own and each others brokenness through love within a community. In this project, each person would hold people's "broken pieces" in their hands and create a whole new work of art with them - symbolizing the healing we can offer each other.

The congregants were asked to bring pieces for the mosaic tree - things that symbolized their lives, their loves, their wins and losses and just anything else they wanted to share with the group. They brought pottery, jewelry, plates, mugs, etc. I processed these offerings, broke everything down and all of the pieces were put into communal bins. 

We organized three mosaic workshops - on June 17, 24 and August 14 - where each person would make a mosaic leaf. Well the response was overwhelming! The first week 62 leaves were made. The second week, 72. The third week, 93! I actually ran out of substrates the second and third weeks. What a great group of people! Here are some of the many leaves they made.

I took the leaves home to let them dry on their mesh backing, then cut them out and repaired any non-sticking areas, then carefully packed them up. 

At the same time, in my studio, I created sections of the trunk using other, larger and not-appropriate-for-leaves pieces. For example I used these small, old and delicate porcelain horses whole because I felt it would have been a shame to break them up for tessarae for the leaves.

I began the installation of the mural at the beginning of August . By this time I was very eager to begin! 

I decided on a Weeping Willow shape for the tree - a graceful, drooping shape that also reminded me of fireworks. So I used long, thin pieces of mirror to delineate a "falling" flow to the branches.

This is only about halfway done now. I will work on it every day until it's complete. Stay tuned for more pictures as the work progresses! This tree is approximately 8 feet tall.

The dedication will coincide with the church's anniversary on September 30, 2011.

The RIver of Life mosaic mural is finished!

This latest work is in the Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California. 

 As with my Tree of Life project at this church two years ago, the congregation was asked to bring in pieces of their lives - like pottery, jewelry, charms, bottle caps, beach glass, shells, mugs, etc - to be included in this piece. Each person wrote a little note explaining their offering. Some examples:

 Over the course of three Sundays this past winter, I led three mosaic workshops where the participants were asked to mosaic, using their pieces as well as miscellaneous tiles and objects, large shapes (on mesh) that I then put together into the large river design. 

 Here is the simple design and color-scheme:

There are 8 rocks in this river, each one representing a step along a spiritual path. 

 The previous post showed photos and explained the beginning of the process. This post continues the story! 

This piece has 6 different colors of grout so I ended up making one small pot of color at a time, rather than one large bucket of color. I began the grouting at the top left corner.

The installation took 6 days and the grouting took 9 days. I worked on a two-story scaffold for much of the time. 

My fingers took a beating too. 

This piece is 110 square feet on a light blue wall measuring 250 square feet.

Below are a few more notes with photos of where the objects are in the mosaic.

And finally, here it is again: 

The River of Life Mosaic Mural   
110 square feet

March, 2013

Unitarian Church of Berkeley California, 

1 Lawson Road

Kensington, CA

Jingletown's Tree of Life Mosaic

This is another panel on the Peterson Street Art Garden in the Jingletown neighborhood in Oakland. 

  

My friend and tile maker, Saundra Warren, had neighbors come to her studio to create ceramic "leaves" for this tree. There are about 250 handmade and personalized creations in this tree.  

You can see that many of the leaves are so creative they arent even leaves!! There is a whale, some cats and even two cars! 

 

This labor of love took Saundra and I about 6 months to mosaic. She has since moved to Salem, Oregon. Oakland's loss is Salem's gain! I will miss her.

 

 You can refer to past posts to see more of the process of us creating this wall. The painting around it will be finished soon by another neighborhood mural artist - Jill McLennan. 
Here are some close-up photos:

Tree of Life Mosaic

18' x 10' approx

Peterson Street Art Garden

Jingletown, Oakland, California, USA

Unitarian Tree Of Life Mosaic, Part 2

I love grouting! But I knew grouting this tree would be hard. 

I knew I would need to take great pains to reveal each piece of tessarae because each piece has meaning to someone in the congregation. But within each leaf there could be a small tie clasp sitting next to a thick chunk of outdoor tile!  So revealing each piece was going to be hard!

To prepare the tree for grouting, I first had filled the spaces between the leaves with black tile that had been donated. 

I knew I was using black grout so these tiles would recede somewhat and help to delineate the leaf shapes.There was also too much space between most of the leaves. 

Then I taped off half the tree. That is usually a painstaking process which I dread but today it wasnt so bad! 

The grouting process is an artform in and of itself. It begins with an attack of the piece - covering the artwork rather violently with handfuls of colored "slop" and ends with a delicate buffing and polishing that can last for hours. 

But in between is the painstaking removal of the grout that covers each and every piece of tessarae. And if one is working outdoors in the sun, the time between these steps speeds up considerably! 

I love working in the sun but it means the grout dries faster, needs to be removed faster so it doesnt dry onto the tessarae. But the fast drying time means you can get to the buffing and perfecting stage faster too. And the best part is removing the tape to see the shape edges all around the piece. Love it!

 I like to use dark grout and am getting to like just plain black the best. I chose it for this tree mosaic because it was the only color not used in the leaves themselves! 

I knew it would also set off the jewel-tone colors in the leaves. And it creates a little bit of a stained glass look that I like too.