The Revolution will be Ceramicised. : Background is everything.

So we are into the last few days and most people are finishing off their work and look like they will finish on time. A couple have already completed theirs and are now helping others.
I decided that I hated the the look of my background - the stone colour at the top looked so flat and dead that I removed it. Instead I concentrate on the background of the lower section. I decide to continue my neighbour Orlando's background - this is a flow of thin, almost diamond shapes, mainly blues and greens that swirl around. It reminds me of both Monet's dabs of colour and Van Gogh's portraits. This is not my usual way of working, but time is running out and I want to experiment with Isidora's method of pre-cutting shapes and laying them down to create a certain type of pattern. This is how she achieves the speed of her work - with many artists just pre cutting simple shapes that others then apply to the wall. I wonder if if will look to hectic but its too late to change it and I really start to enjoy the pleasure of losing myself in just the colour of the tiles.

In the evening was day 3 of our talks. I especially enjoy Sherri Warner Hunter and Gary Drostle talks. Both are such highly skilled mosaicists and its fascinating to hear about how they achieve their large scale public work.

On Thursday afternoon we all go to the park where the Mayor had arranged a lovely cocktail party. There was a traditional Chilean band playing and dancers to entertain us. This was followed by a marvelous banquet of food and drinks. It was hard to drag ourselves away from such a lovely afternoon in the park - but in order to hear the last of the lectures we had to. I was glad we did though as it was brilliant to hear first hand about the work of Laurel True. Her global mosaic project is simply amazing and it was so inspiring to hear about how her work in Haiti is empowering the local community. She really is one of the greatest community/public art mosaic artists that I have had the pleasure to meet and I hope that we will get to work together in the future.

Mosaizm http://www.mosaizm.com/ a European mosaic collective also gave a very interesting talk. They have all graduated from the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli in Spilimbergo (Italy).
http://scuolamosaicistifriuli.it/ They showed a stunning collection of photos of their work - including many restorations of ancient mosaics. They make me feel very unskilled - but its great to see what you can aspire to in the actual craft of mosaics.

There was also a short talk from Stephanie Roberts - a fellow artist from the UK - Wales to be precise. I really like her work. It is very fresh, original and it incorporates a lot of metal and found objects.

We end the evening with a wonderful nighttime barbecue at Isidora's house.