January 8th 2014: Learning Mosaic Artwork in Arlington

Today after work, I had an appointment for a mosaic artwork lesson with Mosaic Oasis Studio and Supply in the town of Arlington.

I was really early, so  I decided to have a quick bite at La Posada, a small Mexican restaurant in town. After looking at the menu, I decided to get the Callitos (pan seared scallops with sauteed fresh mushrooms, tomatoes, crispy bacon in chipotle shallot cream sauce over rice with side salad).

The sauce was so good that I pretty much licked the entire plate.

Unfortunately, I was still hungry after the meal, and as I still had time, I decided to get more food from Great Wok of Arlington, a small Chinese takeout restaurant near the mosaic place, getting the Szechuan Pickled Noodles Soup with Pork. It came served in a takeout container,

but it was actually pretty good, though way too hot for me to finish in the time I had left before the class, so I packed it up for lunch tomorrow, and headed to the mosaic place.

While waiting around for everyone to arrive, I decided to walk around the small shop for a bit, taking pictures of the beautiful mosaic pieces on display.

Finally, it was time for the class to start. We were first told about the history of mosaic making, then shown the different types of tesserae that can be used.

We were to work mostly with vitreous stone tiles tonight, although we were free to experiment with other materials as well.

Given a bare piece of square cardboard to begin with,

we were first told to think of a design, then sketch it out on the cardboard as the outline to lay our stone pieces on. I decided to go with the Fugu design.

The instructor then showed us how to cut the stone with the cutters supplied,

 which was pretty much the same as breaking apart pieces of glass like I did in dichroic jewelry making.

She also showed us how to make angles in the cut, which was simply just changing the angle of the cutting.

With that, I was time to start sourcing for material to use for our artwork from the wall of materials.

With the Fugu as a template,

I started cutting and lining up my white stones first,

then dipping them in glue

and putting them back in position. I used a large shiny stone for the eye,

and pretty much everything else was like cutting stone pieces to fit into a jigsaw puzzle.

From here, it was time to fill the rest of the cardboard with the surroundings, which I decided to make yellow to enable the fish to stand out.

The brick like surroundings was much easier to do, and my piece was complete in no time.

Unfortunately, as the glue has to dry for at least a day before the grouting step can be done,

this meant that I had homework to do, and had to bring home a bag of grouting sand, with specific instructions on how to apply it to my work to complete it. I hope it turns out well tomorrow.