Jingletown Open Studios 2009

To find out more, go to www.jingletown.org

Peacock & Coffee Time Mosaics

These are two of my latest pieces that will be shown in this year's Open Studios at 4:20 Gallery.

Peacock
Mirror, Glass and Tile mosaic
18" x 26"
2009

Coffee Time
Mirror, Glass & Tile Mosaic
15" x 20"
2009

"FIZZ" Mosaic, March 2009

Delaine Hackney's latest mosaic installation was completed on March 21st, 2009.

This is Delaine.It is called "Fizz" and decorates the facade of the ShadZee Bakery at 6o Crescent Drive in Pleasant Hill, CA. This piece consists of 6 panels that measure 5' x 6' each and 4 panels that measure 1' x 5' each. The mosaic work took a couple of months and the installation took two weeks.

Before, above. After, below.

Before, above. After, below.



Before, above. After, below.


The design is comprised of impressionistic bottles done in a sort of 60's style.

(that's me!)

Each bottle is a different color and uses tiles, broken dishes, marbles...
you name it...in Delaine's unique style!
The weather was mostly excellent - wonderful Spring warmth, not Summer frying!
The first panels went up in one day. By the second day we were grouting the first panels in the morning then moving on to install the next two in the afternoon ...
and so on.

The install went smoothly but the most tiring part was dealing with the scaffolding.
Every morning and every evening the "Schlepping of the Scaffolding" would commence. I had to photograph the experience one day! Here are Delaine and Julie demonstrating!
The top "walls" were about 30 feet in the air. They, and then the cross bars securing them, needed to come down first.
But by doing that we had to take down the very things that made us safe up there!
Then the highest platform needed to come down....and, again, with every little bit we would remove, the scaffolding got that much more precarious.
Then the next set of cross bars, the next platform, etc.... And by this time, at the end of each day, we were tired, hungry and filthy! At the beginning of this installation, fear would make us be very careful....by the end of it, we were old pros at this and would be giddy and giggly with exhaustion.
So slowly the scaffolding would come down...inch by inch....piece by piece....becoming more wiggly with each dismantling step!

Then the biggest humiliation of all - we had to drag this contraption across 4 lanes of traffic to the room where it "lived".
It reminded me of the beginning of the old "Monkees" tv show where the 4 of them are pushing a bed down a street....but I digress. By that time we were SO ready for the day to be over we would just laugh at how ridiculous we must look.

Here are the players in this mosaic installation:

Delaine Hackney: designer and principal'

Julie Alpers: mosaics and installation,

and me: mosaics and installation.

The Bunny Room Mosaic Mural Installation

I just finished a mosaic that I am particularly proud of.

It is a mural in the Bunny Room of the Oakland Animal Shelter,
1101 29th Avenue in Oakland's Jingletown district.
Marcy Schaaf, the founder of Save A Bunny, a non-profit rabbit rescue organization
based in Mill Valley, CA, was given the project of creating a nicer space in the room
for the rabbits, volunteers and visitors to enjoy.
Rabbits are often overlooked when people are seeking to adopt a pet.
They are an animal near and dear to Marcy's heart and she works
tirelessly on their behalf.

Here you can see that the bunny room was not very pleasant.
It had been used as a storage room until very recently.
I started by checking out the space and designing a shape that would be cool and pleasing but also one that I could carry out and install by myself.

I came up with a ribbon design festooned with hopping rabbits.
Above is the mock-up.

Marcy is also a mosaic hobbyist and has a LOT of extra tesserae at her home.
I went there and chose a loose color palette that I knew I could work with.


Next I cut the rabbits out of Easyboard and mosaicked them with glass and mirrors in a patchwork style.
The ribbon itself was done in tile on mesh in my studio.

Mural painter Gael Antognini - www.gaudysgood.biz - first painted the wall
with a faux window treatment and a little rabbit near the floor which you can't see in this photo.

That meant I had to take great care to cover the entire wall before grouting.
Even then, I still had to do touch-ups to the paint job afterward.
I left my grout color decision until the end. As I was installing this I realized that one grout color wasnt going to work. So I ended up using three different ones - a bright red for the ends,

darker red around the maroon/purple tiles

and a modified dark blue for the center blue tiles.

These blue tiles in the center are actually made of glass. They are a blue color with flecks of gold and are very bumpy in texture. After I chose to use them I realized, uh oh, the grout is going to get caught in all that texture!

So I used a small wire brush to clean them off after grouting.
All the grout didnt come off so each is left with an even more interesting color gradation.

This mural came out really well.

It measures 15 feet by 2 feet, approximately.
I know it will please visitors and bunnies alike.

Zebra Band Mosaic!

This is my latest mosaic. It is large and heavy: approximately 4' x 3'. The zebras were first cut out of a thin Easyboard and mosaicked with stained glass and mirror.

For visual interest and surprise, some, but not all, of the glass reflects rainbow colors in the right light.

This piece was then adhered using Thinset to a thicker piece of Easyboard and mosaicked with high fire tile of varying shades of white....with yellow for the "music"!

Zebra Band
2009
Stained glass, mirror, high fire tile