Gettin’ Gaudí wit It
It's been too long. I'm all out of whack. I even forgot to put the banana in my banana bread today.
I need your help getting back in the groove. I'll start us off by restricting this issue to one new thing: mosaics. My mum and I collaborated on a few over the Christmas break.
Beagles, a bilby, and what's obviously a yellowedge coronation trout. She's the master, I'm the apprentice.
Most of the materials are from the local tip or op shops (thrift stores): smashed up old mugs, plates, and tiles. The 'tip' was actually a 'Resource Recovery Centre', which you could think of as a museum of power tools, bikes, scooters, and other outdoor pursuits.
Here's what I mean:
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Please me know if you know of any other places like this because I plan to make it a regular thing.
Anyway, back to the mosaics: it's good fun. Snipping glass with the nippers has a similar endorphin hit to popping bubble wrap. Fitting tiles is more cathartic than a puzzle.
None of the mosaics turned out how we had expected. I had a habit of overestimating the amount of detail we could get in.
Here's what I was originally thinking for the bilby:
Same deal with the fish; too much detail in the drawing, not enough detail in the tile shards.
It's unusual for me to look back at work that didn't go as planned and still enjoy it. I'm usually a "it has to be perfect or I hate it" kind of guy (which I'm working on). I don't know what's different about the mosaics. Is it because I'm new to the medium and therefore less critical? Is it because I was just having fun? Have I found my calling?
Read
M-O-O-N, that spells The Stand. I also hit a Colson Whitehead stride with The Nickel Boys, The Underground Railroad, and The Colossus of New York.
Listened to
Gold Sky and The Divine Chord from The Avalanches' new album. A Robin or A Wren by Jeff Tweedy. You Send Me by Aretha Franklin. Our Love by Sharon Van Etten.
Pondered
...I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.