BROKEN GLASS

MOSAIC FRAMES

BEGINNING 3-D ART

glass, mirror & pottery shards, misc. beads & buttons, wood frames, colored sanded grout

& paper collage accents

I think one of the favorite assignments of the year for my 3-D kiddos

are making these Mosaic Frames.

They learn how to cut glass and grout, 

both of which are super fun,

and extremely satisfying.

I thought junior Kiana Hernandez made one of the most beautiful designs

using a combination of paper collage text with clear glass over top,

and milky glass & pottery shards.

Her soft color scheme and floral design was gorgeous.

Next up were two 8th graders,

 Kira Curry & Heer Patel,

both choosing floral designs.

I really liked how Kira limited her color palette to a monochromatic one

using mirror and black glass shards to compliment her pink glass.

Heer picked a primary scheme to work within and also choose to include

dimensional round glass used in brandy snifter decor.

Those are really difficult to grout around and I warn the kids ahead of time,

but Heer made it work beautifully.

Here is a close-up of 8th grader Bhumika Kalaimalai's.

She is a very talented designer and has been featured several times this and last year as well.

She found broken sea shells and combined them with glass & mirror.

Two of my favorites were these by senior Sophie Yang and 8th grader Sophia Oporto.

Sophie (left) had the most difficult frame to grout.

I believe it took her all day long and she had to get permission from all her teachers 

so she could miss their classes and finish her grouting.

It's really critical to finish the grouting at one time.

The reason it took so long was because she used a huge variety of dimensional

pieces in her frame.

In other of words if all the pieces are on the same plane,

it's easy to grout,

but if your pieces are all kinds of different heights,

man oh man it's challenging.

As you can see below she had a button that was really flat next to a huge tile piece

 that was really high (bottom right).

Sophia had a similar problem.

I'm think hers took her about 2 1/2 hours to grout.

She created handmade polymer pieces to incorporate into her design.

We see piano keys and a violin & it's bow.

And then the music notes and color scheme pull her frame all together.

Here we see frames by junior Dustine Ansiboy & junior Kareema Mohamed.

Dustine found a broken plate that worked fabulously in her format,

and Kareema chose a very difficult design to pull off.

She morphed her yellow/oranges into her pinks and reds

(see my garden sphere that took me a year to pull off here).

Hats off to you Kareema! 

Two more 8th graders made incredible frames as well,

Emma Bertel & Alaa Malabeh.

Emma chose to use various height pieces,

hanging in there to grout it.

I believe it took her at least 3 hours.

What I really enjoyed about Alaa's were the pops of coppery oranges, tans & browns.

Subtle and sophisticated. 

I really enjoy the pieces where the kids incorporate pottery shards.

I think it's because my mother & aunt used to play tea party with me

when I was quite young,

bringing out their beautiful hand-painted tea cups and saucers,

mostly made in England.

To this day I collect stunning plates to use in up-cycled projects

and I love sharing them with my students.

I've found some new beauties for this years kids.

Like this next and last one below.

We end with this brilliant work created by junior Rachel Tibayan.

She has it all going on her,

the paper collage text showing, glass, tiles, pottery shards.

It's just gorgeous Rachel.

And she did it all in a neutral color scheme.

Bravo!!

My Second Gallery Showing

I'm very proud to share with all of you that my work was accepted into the National Art/Media Teacher Appreciation Show this last April 2012 at the Art Institute of California at Los Angeles.  There were 13 teachers whose work was put on display and I was so honored to be a part of the show.  Thank you Mr. Z for turning me onto this exhibit in the first place.

I entered my mosaic ball that I call "The Long and Winding Road", and the Art Institiute build the most gorgeous display case for it to sit in.  This is what you saw when you walked thru the front doors, my ball  :) which took me a year to design and create.

I was absoletly thrilled with the display, and Jim got some really great pix.

Tommy Fitzsimmons - The Material Girl

Found another cool fiber artist, cook and very funny lady, Tommy Fitzsimmons (www.tommythematerialgirl.blogspot.com) I check her blog everyday because it's always full of delicious looking food (sometimes including tutorials and recipes), interesting things and places she's seen, her dogs, other artists work she admires and best of all her art quilts. Above is a sphere she saw somewhere that was collaged with all those gee-gaws you save but just don't know what to do with. And for the pix below her caption read "This is how you know when winter is starting to get to people" Pretty funny stuff!

These are 2 of Tommy's art quilts.

And a close up of some of her yummy looking eats. On her blog you will find the tutorial for this marshmallow wreath (below)

The work above belongs to an art quilter she admires, and below is one of her playful pooches.

Tommy is always on the go and visits a lot of fun places and captures great images for her blog like the sets of stairs above and the VW below. Her blog is a treat everyday. So hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Finally Finishing up my Garden Sphere

Finally, after 10 long months I'm gluing on my last piece of glass to my sphere. That was a couple of weeks ago.


Here I am last nite finally grouting the damn thing after driving everyone crazy in the class trying to decide which color grout I should use. Sorry I was such a pain in the ass!


I ended up choosing the grape grout which looks kind of black in these pictures.


And here's my good buddy KK who helped me every step of the grouting way wearing this really funky crown that she found laying around the studio. KK you are the queen of my heart. Thank you for your patience and kindness.


Here are several views of the finished sphere.

Can't decide which side I like the most.

The only bummer with finishing this up is that I'm gonna have to figure out what to make next. So many ideas. So many decisions. What to do? KK, HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

More Progress Made

Every Tuesday nite I drive to the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton for a mosaic class with glass artist Katherine England (http://www.katherineengland.com/). Even though everyone else in the class has already finished their sphere I'm still plugging away at mine. She had us make the sphere around a rubber bouncy ball, the kind you get in the grocery store. We mixed up a concrete slurry and put two layers around the ball. This was my first time working with concrete and I loved it, so much fun! Below are a few views of my unfinished sphere. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of this year. :)

Update on Garden Sphere

I like how this teardrop worked out but not the blue/purple area so i'll be ripping that part off and re-doing it. It feels too orderly and controlled.

Mosaic Garden Sphere