Museum Fun (Museo con Tiepolo)

A few weekends ago, I saw a unique exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The last great Venetian painter Tiepolo (Giovanni Battista) from the neoclassical era was featured by Philip Haas.

Haas was commissioned by the Kimbell to create something interesting based on two Tiepolo sketch paintings it has in its collection used as models for some of his frescos.




















The film was shot from several angles to be shown in a specific viewing room set up with architectural elements from ancient times. The film was projected on the ceiling and four different walls simultaneously, and many times the projections interacted with each other.
For example, at his easel the actor playing Tiepolo looks at real people acting as mythological beings arrayed as if in a fresco and paints them. Mirrors in his studio reflect actions and points of view on the other walls and ceiling.












It wasn't very fast moving (that would make someone sick), but it was better described as subtle changes over time on the different projected panels.

At first it was a little strange being in a room where you can't see all the things going on, but you see some things changing. It was like being in a 360 degree media room that was showing neoclassical stuff. It was pretty high resolution, so it was different to be standing in the midst of all the crazy images.


I'm normally a Dallas Museum of Art kind of guy, but if you are around the Dallas area and have the time, Kimbell is well worth a visit (also, it is free).

Normally after such an interesting exhibit, I would normally be ready to get out the lime plaster and authentic colors and do a fresco now, but I'm getting ready to go to this place.















and this place...














and this place...

What? I Can't Hear Because of Water In My Ears (Che Cosa? Acqua Della Piscina è Nelle Orecchie)

One of the following photos is a picture of part of my pool.
Is it:
A.

B.

C.

D.

Does anyone know what all the above pools are? Any of them? Bueller? Bueller?
If you guessed 'D' you are not incorrect. At least you get a sense of how the custom gold mosaics shine in the sunlight.

Apologies for no complete pictures yet, but I've been busy swimming, landscaping, and stuff so I haven't had time to take a proper photo.

I've been planting authentic Cupressus Sempervirens (Italian cypress) along the fencelines. When I started digging the first hole in the mid-afternoon, I said to myself, 'Self, I'll surely have these six trees planted before dark.' Well that was before the spade I was using made a scraping sound across the bottom of the hole.

I thought for sure that I had found some old Civil War era treasure chest, or at least some 180 year old canned goods or something useful. But, no such luck, it was a rock-like clay that I can probably best describe as shale. You have heard of the Earth's crust? Well I had found one of the crunchier sections of it. I saw this as a good opportunity to drag out my ten pound sledge hammer and a crowbar (and even some goggles to shield the eyes from the flying rock chips). Does anyone else type 'Googles' when trying to type 'goggles'? Luckily, this strata of geological botanical prophylactism was easily pierced and the trees were quickly planted.

Some genuine gold leaf is now on order for the gilding of my carved sign letters, but not before I'll be painting an authentic cinnabar (red mercuric sulfide) and linseed oil primer to make the gold leaf shine.
Maybe you are contemplating the fancying up of a garden gnome or plastic flamingo outdoors? If that's the case, you should use genuine gold leaf. Typical gilding leaf found in stores in the US is what they call 'Dutch Metal', which will corrode when exposed to the weather (no offense Dutch Donut Girl).

You can also buy a variety of gold leaf that is called 'double', which is ironically only 10% thicker than regular gold leaf, but will last for a very long time. I guess there is something to the expression 'Giving 110%'.
I wonder what cheap pikey fellow came up with 'double' to describe +10% where gold is concerned?

Also on my mind lately are recreations of ancient couches with outdoor cushions. I'm working on carving couch legs (I'll need 12 of them for three couches).
The bronze they'll be cast in will need to be around 3mm thick according to UK sculpture expert Ailsa Magnus (check out her enormous iron balls).

That much bronze will still be fairly heavy for 16" tall legs with a 1.5" diameter and cross supports for the wood I'm going to connect it to. The endgame with the couches is to have three in a 'U' shape, which is a classical 'Triclinium'. The triclinium was how dining went down 2000 years ago, but I'll probably just put a fire pit on a mosaic pavement and have everyone drink wine there.

Have a great weekend and I'll really be posting more complete pictures soon (seriously, really, I promise).

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Riuscite a indovinare l'immagine della mia piscina?

C'è una foto di tre divani voglio fare (triclinium antiche)

Those Kids Were Almost on the Short Bus (Autobus Quasi Disastro)

I was driving to work this morning and couldn't believe my eyes, I saw a near collision! A large yellow schoolbus in a lane in front of me was heading the same direction I was. Out of nowhere, a white Toyota Camry sped directly towards the bus and nearly hit it and my car. My car and the bus were both heading South and the Toyota was heading North. Luckily the Toyota didn't cross the double yellow line that was between our vehicles or there could have been serious damage and maybe even loss of life.

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In other news, whenever a pool contractor mentions that they will give you time between cleaning and plastering to do your custom tilework, be sure to ask about the actual window of time. Would it be wrong for me to have assumed, say, a day? Why yes, it was wrong. Maybe four hours of daylight (a half-day)? Wrong again!

My cleaners finished at 8pm and the plaster subcontractors were scheduled for 7am the next day. During this time, I had to lay the tile on thinset, let that dry, seal the stone, let that dry, then do the grout, and yes, you guessed it, let that dry also.

Normally when I do such tasks, I have the wonder of working in daylight where I can actually see the results. But instead, picture a guy awkwardly holding a flashlight on the neck like a mobile phone while frantically wiping grout at 2am. Yay. I'll post some pictures soon, you know, after I finish swimming because I don't want to take the camera in the pool.

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I apologize that I've been extremely busy lately, and haven't had spare time to acknowledge awards and memes and stuff, much lest post. But here is a meme that I can get out of the way. The Jules has tasked me with describing seven traits, and I've seen some of you blog-geniuses out there doing this one so I will attempt to answer also. I wonder what happens if two bloggers simultaneously tag each other *looks up and to the left, resting head pensively on fist*? Would we have infinite meme recursion? Well I for one am not going to tag anyone, but do with this what you will:


1) Lack of patience on the phone is definitely a trait of mine. If someone can't communicate what they are trying to say in the first minute or two, they should just get *off* the phone.I'm not saying that you have to talk like '1920's Reporter Guy', but just say it already...

2) I make things and probably should have my own manufacturing company by now. Whenever I see something nice, my first thought is usually 'How can I make that?' Don't most *normal* people think something along the lines of 'Where can I buy that?'

3) Owing any institution or person money makes me extremely uncomfortable, so I live on the positive side with no debt and within my means. If you want to drive me crazy, buy me lunch and refuse to let me pay you back, ever (But I'll find a way to pay you back, even if you don't realize).

4) Whenever I see a puzzle (especially word or anagram scramble related), there comes with it an obsessive compulsive need to solve.Here is one for you that I just thought of:

'Manic Arranges' = '?' (source words are a clue to the answer)

5) Cold weather is much more enjoyable to me than hot weather, maybe it's just because I live in Texas and am tired of hot weather. Even on a boat, the cold is nice.

6) When picking my passwords, I always **** * ** **** *******. **** ** **** * *******?

7) Under any circumstances, I will not eat watermelon. Or anything that tastes even in trace amounts like a watermelon including but not limited to cucumber, cantelope, honeydew melon, watermelon bubble gum, etc.







Everyone have a great weekend. I imagine all of the US folks will since it is a three day stretch...

How I Saved My Cup (Come Ho Salvato la Tazza Mia)

A few Saturdays ago, I was having a great cinnamon flavored morning coffee as I do sometimes while going over things I want to accomplish for the weekend. I was drawing up sketches of mosaics, designing and things like that which spirit away attention from the tedious and mundane. So I take a sip of the coffee, and *bleh*, it's not at least 5 degrees above my body temperature.

Being a pragmatist, I'm thinking that the microwave might be a good way to remedy the situation. So I 'top off' the cup with even more coffee to the very edge of the brim, full because I love morning cinnamon coffee and reason very soundly that more is better where coffee is concerned. Then strolled over to the microwave oven and popped it in for a minute.

The friendly little beep soon told me that my coffee was ready, so I opened the microwave door (but not right away). I know it's irrational, but does anyone else wait for the 'riccocheting electrons' to finish their magical brain-tumor inducing flight for a few seconds before opening the door? Even the legendary Jack Kilby (the inventor of the integrated circuit) wouldn't have one in his house.

So I grab the handle of my expensive porcelain coffee mug that's part of a set that can't be purchased anymore and take out the coffee. But, not too carefully. You see, as soon as my hand holding the coffee mug clears the microwave oven and is over kitchen tile, a little bit of it splashes out on my hand burning the crap out of it. Remember? I filled that sucker up to where only the surface tension of the coffee was keeping it in the cup.

This would be all well and good except, my hand at that point has involuntarily jerked just slightly because of the extreme pain from the hot coffee, causing little bits more of the steaming and nearly boiling coffee to flow over the edge of the mug, setting off a cruel chain reaction of burn, spill, burn, spill, burn... etc.

After what seemed like several minutes of this spill burn cycle (tm), I had plenty of time to think about dropping the cup, but decided against that because the set was irreplacable. I had time to think about setting it down, but would spill even more in the process maybe causing a more serious set of burns. I wondered about whether biodiesel is a better solution than hydrogen for alternative energy. Then finally, I mustered the will power to stop jerking my hand around.

Inspecting the damage, I saw there were only red marks and tender skin. No visible blisters!

Good times.

Also, as training to see like an artist, take a look at the picture below. Your brain will try really hard to only see two eyes even though there are physically four. If you can see like an artist, it won't disturb you. What do you guys think?

Sigillum Salomonis (Nodo di Salomone)

First of all, I wanted to thank anyone who might have called the Vatican this weekend and put in some good words for me, maybe called in some favors or something like that, because I have approval now to go on the Scavi Tour to see the gravesites under St. Peter's Cathedral!

This has been another busy weekend of mosaic making. I'm in a race with the contractor to finish my 'step spotter' mosaics. In addition to cups and grape leaves I've added lyres, which are harp-like things, basically the 'electric guitar' of 2000 years ago. I wonder if bands back then smashed their lyres after the concerts?

Also new are tridents (which are uncomfortably close to looking like dinner forks), and a close copy of an ancient 'Solomon knot' (top step, the one with interlocking links). You can kind of get a sense of what I have in mind for the layout with the picture below.

The photo below is of a 1700 year old 'Solomon knot' I took in an Italian cathedral. In my mosaic copy I stayed very true to these colors, using blue jasper and other semiprecious and rare stones.

The Solomon knot, or 'sigillum Salomonis' if you are MJenks / native Latin speaker, is a very old symbol. I like to think of it as the world's first 'M.C. Escher' style drawing. But, maybe a very simple 'For Dummies' style version of Escher?

It is found across many ancient and somewhat unrelated cultures. To some, it is supposed to signify eternity. To others, faith across all religions. The symbol has been associated of course with a King Solomon in the Bible, a son of King David. According to the account there, Solomon descended into some bad behavior and paid the price for it with the breakup of his kingdom.

Jumping to a completely different subject, and this is a bad picture, but my marble sign has been set in the spa wall (the stone around it is wet and appears darker, normally it is bright white plus the sun wasn't casting shadows on the letter the right way).

I was so paranoid it was going to get dropped or something right before it was done. But it's all good now. I'm entertaining the idea of gilding the insides of the letter forms or maybe casting actual bronze letters like they did 2000 years ago, but I think I'll wait until everything is done before I do that.

Cement Mistakes and the Grave of Peter

Here are the mosaics for the first step of the pool as a set. I used botticino and Venetian green marble, porphyry and Orsoni gold. I'm glad that this won't be a twelve step program, or I'd have quite a bit more work to do before the pool is complete!

Despite my best efforts of hovering over the contractor and subcontractors this past week, they finally made their first mistake in variance from the plan! The cement 'water spillover' forms that go from the spa to the pool are too far towards the middle, which would leave the water spilling over the edges of the marble sign. You know, like watching a film in a theatre where the curtains were only 80% pulled back. My little message to the contractor is aout where the sign will go.

Anyway, the contractor assured me that it is nothing a diamond saw, mortar, and time can't fix. (Which I knew, but it's good to hear that they'll take care of it so I don't have to go all DIY on them). But, I'm looking forward to finally having a 1200 sq ft (110m) 'canvas' deck on which to paint in marble and glass.

Since the Italy trip is rapidly approaching, I sent away to St. Peters Basilica office of archaeology requesting an awesome tour of the ancient tomb of Peter. Hopefully my sincere pleading and inclusion of a photo of my mosaic (in authentic difficult-to-work porphyry as I imagined the ancients would have done it) might curry favor to get on the list of only 200 or so per day in the whole world that get to see the ancient buried site.

In other news, the great and highly regarded mosaic artist Julie Richey, whose work I admire because of her awesome small grout lines, great andamento, and color choices, gave me an invite to a website where other like minded folks congregate. She has just finished a great Rooster mosaic, which I'm sure that Mo Stoneskin would enjoy greatly given the history of rooster related commentary on this blog.

I trust that everyone is enjoying the last little bit of summer (or winter if you are in the southern hemisphere)?

What's With the Hole In My Yard? (Perché Un Foro Nell'erba?)

I've been somewhat preoccupied the past two weeks with contractors and making sure a swimming pool to be built around my marble sign is progressing.

It turns out that doing your own excavation with a spork is not actually a cost effective way to make a pool, even if you put one between every finger you have. And several million of those 'twisty-tie' things which keep bread bags closed is not an acceptable substitute for tied steel reinforcing bar.

So, the professionals were called. And unfortunately for me, they are moving at breakneck speed. I have several design and art related tasks yet to complete, and I seem to be approaching the critical path.

Luckily, I have had a chance to finish my marble border around my marble sign around which the pool is being built. The ledge the sign will go into is two inches depth, so I needed a good transition to the two inch thick splitfaced stone that will surround it on the wall from the one inch thick marble of the sign. If I get really brave I'll try to carve a classical pattern into the border after it is already set into the wall (with manual tools, not electric ones what with water being so conductive and all).

The 'step-spotting' mosaics will alternate between grape leaves and cups. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish enough of them prior to plastering. Any other ideas for three inch mosaic subject matter? Don't say 'Little versions of the Mona Lisa' because I tried that and it turned out sub-par.

Also, I'm kind of ticked because, if I read a quote right, one marble vendor quoted me 4,000 USD just for *delivery* of stone. I'm pretty sure I could get a whole container load from Turkey delivered to my doorstep for the highway robbery they are attempting. So the search for material continues...