Fort Plain Mosaic

Finishing!

On my last visit, we working on finishing the mosaic. The students worked diligently and were so focused on the project…I was impressed!

It is coming along beautifully!

Here I am, working with some of the students.

Great progress has been made!

The mosaic is almost complete. The students will finish this during their art class and then I will grout it. I will be using two colors of grout, charcoal and medium gray.  In these photos, the tile edge is taped off to protect it from the glue and keep it clean. This was one of my biggest challenges…9 year olds have difficulty controlling the adhesive…too much, too little, sometimes more on top of the glass and not enough on the bottom. For this reason, I will be using an epoxy grout because it has adhesive qualities.

Fort Plain Mosaic

My Third Visit

I prepared more glass for my next visit. This was mostly background material. During this time, the kids learned about andamento or flow, for example, the boat shape pieces used to create flowing water in the fountain. The sky was simply triangle fill.

This was a great lesson in thinking and planning for the students. They really had to think about how one piece will affect the next. They could see when they left a small gap, it would be difficult to fill it in with another piece of glass. 

Continuing the Fort Plain Mural

Our first day of mosaic

Here is the start of the mosaic. The glass was precut for the students, they are very young, 4th grade! I cut the glass for specific areas of the mosaic, labeled each piece for placement, the taped the pieces to a piece of cardboard. I bagged the smaller pieces. Then I brought it all to Mrs. Slaweinski's Art Room at the school, where I worked with 6 to 8 students at a time to put the mosaic together.

The kids were so excited about working on this and their excitement grew as the mosaic came together and they were able to visualize and recognize the historic sites of their home town.

At the day's end, I left the unfinished mosaic in the capable hands of Ms. Slaweinski. She continued the work with the students until my next visit.