After many delays, I invested time today in getting the basement really set up for working with glass. Over the six months—it’s hard to believe it’s been that long—since I took the mosaic-making workshop in Ann Arbor, I’ve slowly accumulated the necessary supplies and tools. I now have two work tables (one made from two sawhorses and a door, and one a converted sideboard), shelves, a selection of stained glass, grout, primer, plywood, a jigsaw, storage containers, two kinds of adhesive, safety goggles, and the necessary tools for actually cutting the glass itself. Most importantly, I have the space, as we’ve worked hard to get the non-mosaic related stuff in the basement organized and stored and distantly as possible from the space where the little shards of glass are likely to be flying around.

In a happy coincidence, a friend from college who lives in town has also recently learned to make mosaics, so he and I have had two successful play dates so far. The process is simple: he comes over, we both sit in the basement and work on our individual projects, and everything gets stored on my aforementioned shelves. Today I was able to have everything organized and set out when he arrived, so we both made quite a bit of progress on the pieces themselves. He’s been generous enough to allow me to use the vitreous glass tiles that he bought as a lot on eBay, so we’ve had fun exploring the colors and exclaiming over the sheer volume of tiles he’s acquired. I imagine that I won’t work with tiles exclusively; on my current piece (an exciting 9×9 inch square) I plan to used stained glass for the background after working the foreground in tile.

This evening, after our play date was over, I spent some further time gluing my tiny pieces of tile to the board so that I could feel accomplished before heading to bed (I like to lay out relatively large sections, swap pieces in and out, generally fiddle around with the tesserae, and then glue them down all at once when I’m satisfied with the final result). Having just started today, I’ve completed maybe a quarter of the surface (so, if you’re following along at home, that would be a 3×3 inch square…in 5 hours of work), and the last thing I did before cleaning up was do the edge tiles, so that they can set up overnight. Which means that with only 15 more hours of work, I’ll be ready to agonize over the grout color and find out if I remember how to apply it!

It’s really amazing how much time even small works take, which I suppose is why they cost quite a bit as art pieces. If I were figuring my time at my adjunct teaching rate (let’s not even consider an attorney rate), I’d be looking at a $400 trivet, before even thinking about the cost of supplies and the nebulous calculation of the market value of my creativity itself. Of course, I hope I was a better sociology professor after 8 years than I am a mosaic artist after 6 months! Check back with me in a half dozen years or so.