Tag: mosaic backer

  • Tough Outdoor Mosaic Backer

    Tough Outdoor Mosaic Backer

    The thinnest, toughest, most water-resistant backer I have been able to make is steel lath plastered with a “concrete” made from Versabond brand thinset mortar (or the equivalent Mapei product) and unsealed aquarium gravel.

    Regular pea gravel is too large for the lath, and so aquarium gravel is used instead.

    The aquarium gravel must be real gravel, such as the quartz and chert gravel shown here and not sealed with polyurethane or some other coating:

  • Blue Crab Mosaic Relic

    Blue Crab Mosaic Relic

    My dear old friend Jay Brown had been requesting a mosaic of a blue crab for years, and this past week Jay had his official investiture as a federal judge, and so I decided it was time.

    Art with a Capital A

    Normally I avoid bespoke commissions like the plague because I have trouble keeping to a script, even when I write the script.

    I have done so much engineering work with rigid specs that it is important to me that my art be its own animal and go where it wants to go. I tend to make things only when I feel driven by mystical-religious type impulses.

    I also seem to be unable to keep things easy no matter how much I plan to do so at the start of the project. I just start exploring, and the Blue Crab Mosaic was no exception.