As much as I like sharing what I'm inspired by and working on at the moment, it's also fun to look back every once in a while and enjoy past work. This piece is probably my favorite thing I've ever created. I was living in south Georgia (a country all to itself that should probably require a passport to visit) and was given a beautiful opportunity to try something brand new. I'd never done any type of mosaic work before. I'd never worked with glass in any art form for that matter. The church I was a part of was in the middle of a very cool renovation project. They'd completely rehauled a vintage movie theater for the church's use and to offer to the community. Because the building had been abandoned and had fallen into such disrepair, many parts of it were just destroyed and had to be rebuilt from scratch. The only thing intact when they first came into the theater were the nests of all the local critters who'd taken up residence in the downtown district. After evicting the local tenants, no effort was spared to bring the old theater back, and make it better than it ever was. We decided, as a group, that the theater's lobby should be something really special and different. So that when people first stepped into the building they would know that this was a place of creativity. One of the ladies in the church had been interested in glass mosaics for some time, but had never attempted it. As we talked through ideas for the lobby, our brainstorming led to a large glass mosaic depicting the hands from "The Creation of Adam" by Michaelangelo. Sitting around the dinner table, our grand ideas sounded great. Inspirational even. A five foot circle of many different colors and textures of glass that would shimmer in the sunlight, illustrating the very beginning of creativity itself. I'm still not quite sure how this came about, but before I knew it I'd been enlisted to create the new masterpiece. Because of the official grand opening of the theater, we had seven days to complete the mosaic. Within a few days she and I stood in the middle of the lobby and stared at the concrete floor. I think it was at about that point that we realized we'd skipped a step. Neither of us had a clue what we were doing.
Necessity being the mother of invention, we rolled up our sleeves and decided the only way to learn to do it was just to do it. First we drew the outline for our design. The idea was to focus on the hands of God and Adam, and replace the background with abstract blue and green swirls that represented the winds of creativity blowing. So as not to stumble across each other, we decided that I would be responsible for the hands, she would do the swirls, and we'd both do the background. I've had plenty of experience mixing colors of paint, pencil, even wax. I had no idea how in the world I was supposed to blend solid colored shards of glass to emulate the subtle color variations of human skin. But with time, effort, and too many glass splinters to mention I started to figure it out. I'm pretty sure I peeled up more glued tile than I laid down for those first couple days. Eventually I started to understand how the glass worked and how to lay it to get the effects I wanted. After roughly a hundred hours, our glass was all laid. Honestly I was stunned that we'd finished it, and that it actually worked out. The only thing left was for it to be grouted. We both agreed that since we'd never grouted any kind of tile we weren't willing to possibly destroy all our hard work, and we brought in a professional tile man. He finished laying the large ceramic tile in the rest of the lobby and then grouted all of it together. I was standing beside him when he dumped the first plop of grout right onto my beautiful glass, completely covering it in sandy concrete. I gasped outloud and decided that I definitely did not need to be there for this. For several nights I'd been having nightmares about people destroying the mosaic, earthquakes that cracked it, fire in the theater, and even one where thieves pried it off the floor and stole it. My blood, sweat, and tears were in that floor and I just needed it to be finished. A couple hours later I got a phone call to meet my artistic partner at the lobby. When we opened the door, I was stunned. It was beautiful. The grout between the pieces of glass highlighted the lines and veins in the design and made it have more texture than I'd imagined. As the sun came through the plate glass doors and windows, the mosaic tiles seemed to almost trap the light inside the floor, making it appear to glow from underneath. I'd never seen anything like it, and more than that, I couldn't believe I'd actually made it. A lot of the time the art in my mind and heart is not exactly what comes out through my hands. This was one of those rare occasions that the results exceeded my expectations.
The Creation of Adam Mosaic started what was to become a long love affair with glass mosaics. After a foolishly ambitious first effort, I did actually read and research how to create mosaics properly. I learned that we'd been on the mark for the most part, and in some cases made our lives a little harder than they needed to be. But overall we did a solid job. I've mosaiced many things since then, but this is still my favorite and probably always will be. I do dream of doing something of similar size someday but the right project hasn't come along yet. I'm so incredibly thankful for the people who believed in me and pushed me to expand my creative muscles. I learned so very much from them, and I am eternally grateful.
