Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center

Here is the Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center located on the beach in Santa Barbara. And below is my Tree Frog which won third place. It's called "Tree Frog Plays Chameleon" only because I wasn't very happy that the frog didn't stand out more against the background. Which just shows that everyone has their own opinion about an art piece. Fortunately, the judge for this show, Sue Slater, thought this was worthy of third place. 

More Works in Progress

The hearts are almost finished. Or at least the gluing is almost finished. The colors look odd because I photo-graphed them early this morning and had to use lights and flash.  I've decided I like the way the opus vermiculatum looks though I must say it is definitely more of a challenge.

On the right is my tree frog. I decided I couldn't really tell it was a frog so I pulled out some of the tiles and will replace them today. Also I tiled the edges with various colors of green tiles.

And below is the transferware piece. Now I am adding a section of green pieces. As soon as I install the new blade in my ring saw, I'll cut some of the centers out of the plates and see what looks good in the center of this circle. Or I can still add a mirror. And then the dreaded question, what color do I use to grout all these pieces?

Mosaic Froggy and a New Heart

First is a heart made with mirror, stained glass and some roses I cut from an English plate with my ring saw. It started out as a resin heart-shaped trivet I found at a thrift store. I drilled two holes in it and added two d-rings for hanging. I seem to have a penchant for hearts. I have one ready to cut out of a wood piece in the studio but the blade keeps falling out of the jigsaw. Obviously I'm still learning about power tools. I'll have to wait until my friend Jennifer or my handyman Jim come over and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

And then below is the froggy. It's still hard to see that there is a frog in there. Maybe the grout will help. It was a hot weekend here in Santa Barbara so I spent a lot of the afternoon yesterday in the house affixing tesserae to substrates! That means gluing tile to a base!

Mosaic Froggy

For several days I've been working on this tree frog. Frogs are harder than they look. For me, at least. Now that I look at it in a picture, I wonder if I picked the wrong color background. Those feet are pretty bright orange. And the background is a nice lavender/blue. But there is no turning back at this point because tree frogs really do have orange feet so I'll just keep going until it's finished.