Okay, I’m going to admit that sometimes I can’t believe how much of an idiot I can be. (Insert my eye roll and headshake here). Last fall, I finished a mosaic before a pending shoulder surgery. I probably should have bypassed mosaic work, but I knew I would be sidelined after surgery. I wanted to squeeze in one more piece of art if I could. There wasn’t too much cutting involved because of the shoulder issues. And, honestly, because I usually prefer to alter most precut tiles I use, this piece is not one of my favorites. Because of its orientation, (which is where my idiocy comes into play), I’m having some trouble embracing the finished piece, though I do love its color palette of white, gold, and blue. My substrate was Wedi board, which requires pre-planning for hanging. One must think through and secure the hanging mechanisms before beginning the mosaic. I did this, and decided to use pronged t-nuts and D-rings. I then gave the entire front side a skim coat of thinset and built up a few dimensional “berms” in various spots of this intended abstract. So far, it was headed down the path I had planned. I began laying the tesserae (bits and baubles of glass), excited and anxious to knock this out. I worked on it for an hour or two in the evenings plus some time on the weekends. When I was about seven hours in, I needed to reposition the entire board on my worktable. I picked it up with its backside facing me and noticed the hanging mechanisms were inserted into the bottom part of the board. Wait, what? But I had put them on the top, and the blue was to be placed in the top section. Only it wasn’t. I had been in such a rush that I had built up those berms without checking to see which end was up. I had started to place the tiles onto my substrate, still without a glance at the back. It wasn’t until I picked it up to move it that I caught my mistake. Granted, it's an abstract, but damn, that is not the orientation I wanted. Ugh. I had to pivot, and the intended top had to become the bottom and vice versa. I was too far along to start over, or rip things off. It is “fine," and of course no one would know by looking at it that it’s upside down, but I just really prefer the other orientation. It is slowly growing on me, and the white background is peppered with little bits of 24 karat gold tesserae, which I do love. The blue included beautifully iridescent pieces, and the silver is reflective with some textured mirror incorporated. The textured sections were not meant to be clouds, but toward the top they do appear cloudlike to me, and the blue line looks a bit like a horizon line. Again, not as abstract as I wanted, but that’s okay. The name of this piece is Pivot. I guess that’s what we are required to do more often than we’d like. There’s a lesson in here somewhere: Slow down, take a deep breath, and learn to pivot. Here is a short video of how the piece evolved: Thanks for stopping by,
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