Oddly Passionate

I was waxing my way through Summer Pierre’s fab blog called An Accident of Hope (gotta love it), when I mired down in the post “30 Things I Feel Oddly Passionate About.” Of course that got me to wondering, what would be tops on my own list of odd passions? Of course I’m passionate about my family, art, respect, and a crucial pair of gladiator sandals from Anthropologie, but those hardly qualify as odd. And I’m passionate about things like open cabinet doors, spiders skittering towards my legs, and combing my hair before answering the phone, but I’m just going to go ahead and file those under OCD. When it comes to the quirkiness that makes me me and makes you you, what are the defining idiosyncrises? Shall we give it a look? Continue reading

Ciel Signs On

Today I became official, with the (six-hour) mounting of Ciel’s sign, and my first (and last) adventure with stained glass. I can’t tell you how giddy I am to 1) have that nine-square-foot sign off my living room floor, 2) to give my slit fingers and gouged nails a break from the grinder, 3) to have survived the deadly plexi-flex , and 4) to have kept the smile nailed in place through four mounting trials and three dismountings so the space could be adjusted, and adjusted, and adjusted. Mounted photos to follow shortly on my flickr site. Stained glass on plexiglas, with crystal point stars, ungrouted, mounted behind a clear glass pane.

Call to Artists: Contemporary Mosaic Art Juried Exhibition

It is with utmost pleasure and not a small amount of surprise that I announce the opening of Ciel Gallery and Mosaic Studio and, coincidentally, a call to artists for our first juried mosaic exhibition. With the generosity of MosaicSmalti.com and ArtfulCrafter.com, we’ll have a fabulous show opening September 4, 2008 in Charlotte, NC — as far as I can tell, a real first for these parts. For more information about Ciel, go here. For a full prospectus, go here and click on the September exhibition. Hmmm, should I say “Y’all Enter??” Well, perhaps not. But hey Babes and Boys, let’s show this city some killer mosaic, every which way and then some. Power to the tesserae, and I bow to those who cajole the bits of glass and stone into arias of light and texture and heart.

Mosaic Mural Intensive with Laurel True

Ah, April in Oakland! Tried Paris once and it was cold and rainy, but eight days of brilliant sunshine set the perfect stage for my venture cross-country for Laurel True’s Mosaic Mural Intensive at the Institute of Mosaic Art. Click here to see the completed mural for Kefa Coffee.

Open Heart Mosaic

Open Heart Detail

Ta Da! Just finished this one in time to pack up for Mosaic Wonderland in Miami. I didn’t enter a piece for Mosaic Arts International this year, but I did manage to complete a small work for the Mini Salon, where members and guests will have the opportunity to peruse and purchase each other’s art. Continue reading

The Year of the Mosaic

Paua Shell

Back in August, I made an offhand comment to a fellow art league member. An art student home for the summer was looking for ways to fatten up her portfolio, and offered to help us gain some additional community presence. “Why don’t you have her design something for the exterior of the building?” At 52, I could never pass for having been born yesterday. You’d think I’d have known better. Continue reading