"Nothing Gold Can Stay" custom mosaic
We recently finished up a large mosaic commission a year in the planning and execution. The inspiration for this piece was the idea of impermanence. We designed a triptych of 12" x 18" panels in Mexican smalti, a type of thick, opaque glass. The title of the series is Nothing Gold Can Stay. Here's a sampling of the boat loads of process shots we took while working on this project.
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Sketch on paper and a mosaic maquette or preliminary model on the left, bags of smalti ready to go on the right.
It's such a pleasure to work with the rich color and texture of smalti. How about those trays full of prepped and sorted material? This project was interrupted from time to time with shows and other smaller commissions. Those trays have been a life saver moving sorted material and projects around the studio as needed.
Kyle installed the finished triptych in his handmade reclaimed oak frames. Johannah signed the backs, and then it was time to come up with a way to photograph the piece. We turned our whitewashed pallet wood wall 90 degrees and hung it from the gantry crane to create a backdrop large enough to hang the three pieces together.
