Our 6th-8th graders are busy creating a 25′ border for the playground. There are so many things I love about this group’s workshop. Although the overall design may seem simple, it is this simplicity that allows the students to own the project – individually and collectively. Each artist is working on a square foot of the border that needs to contrast with the pieces around it while we are also playing with the colors of the birds that overlap the boundaries to create the impression of transparency.

I love watching this creative and focused group at work:

These photos illustrate a little about our creative and collaborative process:

Today’s workshop with  IMS students was productive, collaborative and fun. I’m so aware that many stars need to align for a successful workshop, so this evening I feel grateful.

To prepare for this afternoon, each square foot of the mosaic was labeled, traced, taped to foam core, and covered with a piece of contact paper (sticky side up) and protected with the backing. Thanks, Roxanne, for making this somewhat overwhelming task fun.

The bird silhouettes were traced on to our to-scale 25′ mural

Each square foot is retraced, covered with contact paper.

Everything is labeled so that finished mosaics will correlate back to the artwork.

Today’s agenda included:

Working collaboratively to create something cohesive

Working with a limited palette of about 20 colors of tumbled glass, students worked together to plan out a color scheme for our mural. Things we considered included contrast between colors, opportunities to create illusions of transparency and overall color balance. Hopefully we got it right but we’ll probably need to make some adjustments next week.

Mosaic techniques and tips

We also discussed how to place the glass so that there is a constancy of pattern created when the mosaic is grouted, how to cut glass using wheeled nippers and how to stay safe by always wearing goggles while cutting glass and using a brush and dustpan to sweep away glass “crumbs.”

As you can see in the photos, some beautiful mosaic work is in progress.

A BIG thanks to our super star volunteers! 🙂

3rd – 5th graders are working hard, continuing to hone their new mosaic skills and seeing how the pieces are coming together on their mosaics. We started this workshop with students placing their completed mosaic pieces on the drawing of the mosaic mural. We are seeing the small pieces of tumbled glass make butterflies, the Smith Tower, the Space Needle…, the small mosaics coming together to create a whimsical cityscape…

… and students from different elementary schools working together to create mosaics for their playground.

We still have much work to do but our progress is tangible!

The two mosaic murals (nearly 30 square feet!) being created with the 3rd – 5th graders are in some ways, our most complicated project for the playground. It truly showcases the collaboration of Jose Orantes’ magical way of incorporating the students’ drawings into a beautiful mural and my detail-oriented love of glass mosaics.

I love these photos that capture the transformation of drawings into mosaic art. Each mosaic element is unique and original. Creating art, like doing a science experiment, is all about trial and error, reworking, patience and perseverance. The medium of mosaics requires additional concentration, attention to detail and learning a new technique that has its own learning curve.

Jose Orantes and I had a wonderful time with our 6th – 8th graders at Islander Middle School. It was so great to work in an art room (Thank you Ms. Biggs!) with such a creative and hardworking group of students.

The concept of (1B) a 14″ x 25′ border that will be created with this group is “Birds in Flight” and these students will be involved in the process of designing and creating a nearly 30 square foot Public Mosaic for the playground! Today they traced bird silhouettes and arranged them on pre-measured boards to create the design. Other students used a template to measure the background color changes.

We will be working with tumbled glass, so creating the illusion of transparency with a limited color palette and “large pixels” of color will challenge our understanding of color theory and artistic license.

Next week, we plan to finalize the designs, work with color, prepare our mosaic work surfaces, practice cutting glass using nippers (always wearing safety glasses) and begin the mosaic process!

We were so busy working that I forgot to take photos of the group in action 😉