We’ve finished working on the mosaic mural of Jose Orantes painting “Birds in Flight.” Please bear with me as I share our last work sessions in which we focused on the details. 

We knew tiling the hole would be complicated

Lots of detail work!

Tiles were cut one-by-one to fit

We took care to work from both sides

Here’s a detail…

Pleased with the results.

Tiling around and within the concrete wall was challenging and took a long time. Jose and I created a plan for tiling the angled and curved surfaces. We introduced a neutral gray 3/4″ glass tile inside the circular space with one row of the 10mm tile running dow the center. This design filed the width of the surface perfectly.

Working together, Jose applied the thinset glass adhesive to the surface and I carefully placed the tile all around the inside surface of the cutout. Along the top (upside down), I took care to install smaller pieces of the mesh-backed tile to assure that they would adhere. On the angled curved surface rows of four tiles were sliced so that the outer row near the horizontal tiled wall could be separated a little. The following day, I needed to fine-tune our work. We know how important it is for opening to be strong and also finely finished to avoid sharp edges.

For the horizontal plane to accommodate the circle cutout, nearly every tiny tile around the circumference needed to be cut on the appropriate angle. That was this detail-oriented artist’s challenge.

As you can imagine, many hours were spent working on this detail in the mural. The colors of 10mm tile used in the hole come from Jose’s design. He purposely incorporated a neutral area where the mural hit the hole. We used these tiles that got cut out within and around the hole!

Heather “muds” with expertise!

Nancy, Jose, Sandy, Heather

Nancy filling in grout and finessing.

Carole helps in so many ways!

I can’t mention enough how awesome our friends/volunteers are. Thank you Heather, Nancy, Bonni, Sari and Carole for your help with the hole and the final details!