As you know, I love 3-D mosaic creations. I also love cake! So when I saw this masterpiece, I just had to contact the artist and get her permission to share her work. She is Sylvana Baracchini, and she creates mosaics in Hingham, Mass. Her website is Mixed Media Madness.
What I like about this piece is the whimsy factor. She calls it her Mad Hatter cake, and it won a "Best Sculpture" award at an art competition in Quincy. Did you notice the light bulbs used as petals on the top, right next to the porcelain roses? I think the colors are perfect, and the icing details are just right.
Only problem: With this type of cake, you can have it, but you can't eat it!
The subheading for this post is "The Customer is Always Right." I made this piece for clients who had seen the green and blue "Summer School" that I made a couple of months ago and wanted something like it but in a different color scheme, for an alcove in their home. They wanted to match their decor in mostly browns. I started with more pastels than brown, thinking it would be livelier, but the feedback I got was that they wanted less pastel - especially no pink, and no bright yellow or orange. At first I was not so happy with that directive, because when I think of fish, I think of bright colors, but then I found some beautiful caramel colors of glass, and some pale orange, and an off-white, as well as a rich honey brown and vibrant rust, and as the piece began to take shape, I realized they were right; there are so many variations to the base colors that the finished piece is as lively as if the fish were swimming right there on the wall! So the moral of this story is Listen to the Client and Everything Should Turn Out Right!
I just had to share with you this very creative mosaic by my friend and mosaic artist Margo Barber. She often says to never throw anything out because it just might find its way into a mosaic, and here's proof! The way the tiger's head is incorporated into the side of the pot makes it seem as if he is ready to leap out of the pot. Seeing this makes me feel a lot better about the many buckets of broken dishes and vases and figurines and miscellaneous ceramic things stowed away in a corner of my studio (people always save them for me). Someday they will find their way into a garden ornament...
"The goose thought, on reflection, that in his next life he'd prefer to be a flamingo."
... is about 10 to 12 inches long - about the size of a crow - and has a slightly curved beak and that wonderful crown, which it usually wears laid back but whips up when excited. I saw one in Kashmir one summer; first you would hear the "hoop-hoop-hoop" call, and then it would swoop down onto the front lawn to search for insects or lizards. When it flies, the black and white on its wings flashes.
This mosaic dyptych is now showing at the new Bolivar Art Gallery in Sarasota, at 506 S. Pineapple in the Burns Square area. The gallery is open First Friday evenings for the monthly Art Walks; also Tuesday through Thursday 11-5 and Friday/Saturday 11-6. I had a tough time finding small raised letters to incorporate into my mosaics; the H, P and E in this mosaic are from a child's alphabet learning kit, but they are actually a little larger than I really wanted; the Os are brown jade rings. The craft stores have mostly tiles with letters on them, like Scrabble tiles; if anyone knows where to find raised letters, I'd be very grateful to hear about it!
This is a partial view of one of my first mosaic projects - a wall panel that was about a foot wide and five feet high. The client wanted me to incorporate pieces from a box of costume jewelry and odds and ends that she had collected over the years. It was an intriguing project, because it evolved in a very organic and unplanned way. That process often works best for me, because when the finished forms are spontaneous, they have a freer look and feeling than when I plan something out in detail.
When I started out, I did not intend to grout, because of all the unusual shapes and forms that would make grouting very difficult. The piece includes sea glass, marbles, costume jewelry, and special pieces such as the glass bird in the lower left, and the glass leaf in the upper right, as well as tile and mirror in various shapes and configurations. The face is built up with mortar so it has some dimension. But when I was finished, I realized that the piece lacked cohesion, so I ended up "grouting" with paint - in this case a golden yellow color; I used a thin brush and - over many hours! - painted between each piece. (Since then, when I'm not sure at the beginning of the project whether I will grout or not, I paint the backing board first!)
Grout can make or break a mosaic work; and the color can either enhance or fight with the finished work. Usually a medium gray is a good choice, because it fades to the background. I use black if I want the mosaic to really stand out, and sometimes other colors if I want the grout to contribute to the final effect. Grout can be mixed with pigments to make any color you want. I recently learned of a good tip for deciding which grout color to use; it came from a fellow member of SAMA, the Society of American Mosaic Artists. Many of the books say to do test pieces, but if that's too much time and trouble (and it usually is for me, being someone who likes to work quickly), you can simply sprinkle a little powdered grout of different colors over your finished piece, and you will immediately see which color is going to work best.
This morning I installed the mosaic piece to cover an electrical panel in my client's hallway. It turned out even better than I imagined. As you can see, the hall has a handy bump-out right below the panel, so no one will accidentally bump against it (I have no idea what it's really for!). The installation is not quite perfect, because the wall has a slight bow to it, so the piece does not sit perfectly flat against the wall. Nothing I can do about it, so I won't worry, but I do like to have things turn out as perfectly as humanly possible!
Below is a close-up. I love how the circles show up now that it's grouted. The grout color is called "Harvest Yellow," and it turned out to be pretty darn close to the wall color, a Benjamin Moore color called Wheatfields. Normally I prefer darker grouts, but in this case, I wanted to match the wall color as much as possible. There is so much light in the apartment that it shows off very well.
I did enjoy doing this piece, but I will also be very happy to move on to the next project.
