In going through my mother's house last week (we're moving her to Florida in the fall), I came across this small bird book printed in 1905, written by Chester A. Reed. It doesn't say, but I imagine he is also the artist. The descriptions include this priceless statement about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker: "Range: Formerly the South Atlantic States and west to Texas and Indian Territory, but now confined to a few isolated portions of Florida and, possibly, Indian Territory." Indian Territory included part of Oklahoma, which was not granted statehood until 1907, and Arizona and New Mexico joined the Union in 1912. The illustrations are charming, and I am sure they will be a great source of inspiration for future mosaics or drawings. As anyone who reads this blog knows, birds are my favorite subject!
"Macaw" is a new diptych. I love the feeling of flight in this piece. It took a while to finish because I was missing the orange-red for the tail portion; when I started the bird, several months ago, I must have had only a small piece which I used for the upper body, because when I went to finish it I could not find that color anywhere - even my local stained glass store didn't have it. I am indebted to Belinda Chase from my monthly mosaic group for giving me a small sliver of orange-red so I could finish that tail!
I still have not found small alphabet letters that I am happy with, so when it was time to finish Macaw, I finally just decided to use glass paint. It worked so well that I redid the Hoopoe in the same way - I was never really happy with the plastic letters I used previously. If you bake the tiles after painting them, the paint adheres and even stands up to grout.
For several months I've had a stack of small boards lying around, supposedly to make shelves with. But not being a particularly handy person, I finally realized that the boards would never make themselves into shelves, so I decided to cut them up and make small mosaic "gems" with them. Each piece is about 7" square. You can see my process in the picture - sketches on paper, then transferred onto the boards (there's a toucan in front ready to be mosaicked) and a couple of the finished squares toward the top (not yet grouted). I'm working in stained glass, which I'm enjoying more the more I work with it. The colors are brilliant, and it's easy to cut tiny pieces that stay flat in place (with tile, sometimes a small piece can be hard to place flat due to the ridges on the back of the tile). I have a couple of dozen of these small squares, and look forward to creating a variety of mosaic gems. I'm starting out with a series of birds, and we'll just have to see what comes next. Stay tuned.
