Introducing new mosaic "Eclipse"

This past May there was a solar eclipse. It's such a fascinating thing when the earth, moon and sun line up. In this case the moon passes between the earth and the sun and crosses the sun. In a full eclipse the circle of the moon completely covers the circle of the sun and casts its shadow over the earth. [at least that's how I understand how it works] Eerie.

On May 20, in the 5 and 6 p.m. hours here in our northern California community, we had a perfect opportunity to experience this awesome phenomenon. The senior software engineering guy has a small telescope that he set up out on the sidewalk. He built up around the telescope a way to project the eclipse onto a white board which was on a black cloth on the sidewalk. That way we could safely watch this fascinating event.

I love outer space "stuff." It's probably why I love scifi that takes place in space. I heard somewhere that humankind just might be making our first foray beyond the Moon within the next 25 years. That would be so very cool. So very cool. In fact, right now if I was a kabillionaire, I would help to fund a craft so that ordinary folks could at least ride up beyond the atmosphere, peek down at this great blue marble, then come back. And if I wasn't too elderly, go myself.

photo taken May 20, 2012

That's the stuff of dreams. For now I was entranced by the eclipse. So much so that it inspired my artist muse and resulted in a mosaic to interpret the experience.

For this work I chose as support a 12"x12" cut of wedi board. I covered it first with a layer of thinset and then sanded that smooth.

Because I love working with tiny tiles, I chose them for this mosaic. I felt they would give me the detail and movement I wanted. I chose blues for the moon's phases across the sun; white, red, yellows and oranges for the sun. The deepness of space itself I translated with metallic copper tiles. Often I don't grout my mosaic work,