Riverbed Mosaic Table

This is a mosaic table project that I just completed. It will be auctioned off May 2nd, with the proceeds going to the Wellness Community of Knoxville (they offer support for people affected by cancer). The entire process can be viewed here- www.mightymudclay.com/mosaictable.

Inspired by the natural beauty of the Smoky Mountains, I decided to create an abstract riverbed. All of the river rocks are ceramic tiles that I created from scratch and glazed to resemble stones. The shore is created from a variety of stained glass. I didn't have a pattern, I just cut the pieces to fit. The table is grouted with a rich chocolate brown sanded grout to make the colors really pop, but without being to stark. The entire mosaic has been cleaned and sealed and it is now ready for use! If you are interested in bidding on the table, please visit this page for more information.

The New Gallery

Here are some images of our finished Mighty Mud gallery space. What an improvement! If you have not been keeping up, click here to see some "before" images. I'll post some more close-ups of the art in upcoming blogs. And yes that is Amy & I at the front counter trying to look quite busy!

The Art Has Arrived

So, last week was consumed by finishing up all the details of the gallery, fixing paint, adding baseboards, installing shelving, and the most exciting of all- displaying all of the great artwork!

All of the invited artists were asked to bring their work by Tuesday. Some were running a bit late, but honestly, so were we, trying to get the gallery in tip top shape for the show on Saturday. We started installing everything on Thursday. Amy and I pulled an all nighter to make sure we were finished in time. (Can you tell by the dazed look she has in the photos?) It doesn't seem like that much work until you really start thinking about how to best display things, and who's art will complement who's. I almost wonder if we worried too much about these details. So here are some shots of the madness as we began to install the gallery show. By Friday evening, we were exhausted, so with some extra help from my husband Adam, Barron Hall and Adam Paulek, we pushed to finish hanging the show in time. There were some minor details to take care of and lots of cleaning on Saturday morning. We were down to the wire, but the show was completed in time! And our customers were really complementary about the show. I don't have pictures from Saturday, we were SO busy!! But I will post some photos of the final results very soon!

After Thanksgiving Gallery Overhaul

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with our family, relaxed and completely stuffed ourselves with good food. The next day, while the rest of the country was out in the madness doing their Black Friday Christmas shopping, Adam and I got to work on overhauling Mighty Mud's gallery space.

For those of you that have never been to Mighty Mud, you may not understand how important this space is. When you enter our front door, you immediately step into our gallery. You have to walk through it to get to our ceramic retail area and artist studios. So it is the first impression that our customers have. And it was quite boring. But not anymore!

Friday we started clearing out the current art show and all of the fixtures in the space. We prepped to paint the ceiling a dark "Treetrunk" brown. It was just boring white office ceiling tiles with fluorescent lights and a strip of spotlights in the middle. Not adequate lighting for a professional gallery space. So on Saturday and Sunday, we removed the fluorescent lighting, painted the ceiling and started installing these great directable halogen spotlights around the perimeter of the room that we purchased at Ikea. Luckly, Adam's brother is an electrician, so we had professional help wiring them all. It was more difficult than expected though because the clips on the lights were crushing the ceiling tiles. So we had to wire each light to the rafters above. The lights took a lot more time than expected. But what a difference! It was so worth the extra work. Meanwhile, Adam's mom, sister, some studio artists and I started staining all of the new gallery shelving a dark ebony color. I will be more than happy if I don't have to stain anything else again for a very long time. I was having dreams about staining in my sleep!

After all the lights were finished, Amy and I immediately went to work painting all of the gallery walls. The main gallery walls are a nice warm neutral color and the accent wall (which also serves as the entryway into our space) was painted a deep teal. The teal was being difficult because of the vibrancy of the color, and required several coats to get it right. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning Sunday night to get all of the walls finished so that the floor could be installed on Monday. (We opened for business again on Tuesday at 10 am sharp). So after working till 3:30am, Adam and I went to IHOP and then crashed for the night.

We woke up fairly early the next day. I went shopping to get incidentals that we needed for the upcoming gallery opening on Saturday, while Adam headed to the studio to install the floor. The floor is a cool floating click laminate flooring that looks like medium beech wood. No glue required! (Also from Ikea, less than $1 a square foot) By then, Adam's arm was really bothering him, but with help from my dad and his brother and friend, the floor was finished on time.

The rest of the week was finishing all the details, trim & paint, and installing the show. I will post images of this in my next blog. It was quite a long weekend, but the result was so worth it in the end! My sister loved the one-of-a-kind hulu hoops that were dropped off for the gallery show, so she is taking a break from working to try one out!

Puppy Love

Since I have all these cute photos, I thought I'd share some with you... This is Barbez, my studio assistant and his friend Genny. They are secretly boyfriend and girlfriend but being an elementary school romance, Barbez is too shy to admit it. Genny, on the other hand jumps all over him and smothers him with kisses. Barbez pretends not to care. Then he chases her around... Puppy love...

P.S. Barbez loves to wear sweaters, especially since the studio is usually in the lower 60s this time of year and he has short fur. He has even a scarf from one of our studio artists!

Our Gallery- Before

Here are some images of what our gallery looked like before we started remodeling. Its ok but quite bland and boring compared to the amazing artwork on display. White everywhere, dirty ceiling tiles and not enough spotlights. Since we are converting our space into a permanent craft retail gallery instead of just a monthly rotating exhibit, we thought it was time to renovate! Today I'm painting walls and staining shelves. We are also adding other things that I'll reveal in other upcoming blogs.... gotta keep up the suspense! But here is a hint- we went shopping at Ikea in Atlanta...

Fall Update

So.... I've been a very bad blogger recently... no posts in quite awhile! But I've been very busy! And plan to stay busy... So why not blog about all the fun stuff I've been working on? Recently, I've been in jewelry production mode again. I forget how much I miss creating my jewelry when I'm busy working on other things around the studio! I had a show a two weekends ago, the Foothills Craft Guild Fine Crafts Fair. Here are some photos of my process (note the chaotically messy work area) and a couple of photos of the show. And yes, that is my grumpy sister in the background (it was early and she had no coffee!)

We are now in the process of renovating our gallery at Mighty Mud! I will be posting photos of the process soon, as we are trying to complete everything over the holiday weekend! We are converting our space to a full time art/craft gallery representing local art: pottery, of course, and lots of other fun stuff. If you are in the Knoxville area, please come check it out! We will be having our big grand opening/ holiday party December 6th. More about this soon as well.... Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving

Whew, What a Work Week

So after having some fun last week, its back to work for me! I have been sitting at the computer ALL day (minus the 30 min walk around the neighborhood w/my dog). I'm going to visit my family in upstate New York next week, so I have to get my "homework" finished before I can go. I wish I had a fun art project to report on, but I haven't had much time to make stuff. I've been working on posting our fall class schedule on our website and figuring out how to set up an online registration system. I finally got it to work, so now its just a matter of adding the rest of the classes by the end of the week and then creating a printable flyer for our newsletter. Did I also mention that its back to school time & we've been busy selling supplies too? Whew, its only Wednesday and I feel like collapsing. Well, if I can get through the week, maybe I can sleep in the car, its a 16 hour drive!

I've posted a photo of how relaxed Barbez is at work. Its too hot for him to get up and greet people at the door these days (or so he says), so he tends to spend most of the day on the couch next to my desk. And yes, that clutter is my desk! Hopefully I'll have time to straighten before I leave next week!

Smashing Pumpkins- Revisited

So, at the very last moment Adam & I decided to get tickets to see the Smashing Pumpkins at the Tennessee Theatre for the very next day. I had told myself that it was not a necessary expense since we had seen them last year in Asheville at the Orange Peel- and I don't think they could top that performance. But, with a bit of extra spending money in my account and extra tickets to a sold out concert released, I decided that we had to go.

It was a good concert, with some very funny highlights including kazoos and an accordion in the encore lineup. But as I suspected, no where near as good as last year. Maybe because the Orange Peel concerts were the first set of concerts they'd played since the 90's. Maybe because the Orange Peel was an extremely intimate venue with devoted fans from the entire eastern region of the US (the only other set of concerts were in San Fransisco). Or maybe because a good portion of that show was acoustic and Billy played an acoustic version of "Rocket" that I'm still lusting over. He'd didn't do much acoustic stuff last night, it was a lot harder and darker- think a so-so version of Pink Floyd. The concert didn't have an opening band last night and it ended 40min sooner than I was expecting. Oh well. I guess you can't mess with perfection, the concert we saw at the Orange Peel can't be beat. (The top two photos are last night, the bottom one is from last year, and yes I did take that photo from where I was standing)

Inspiration: Mead's Quarry

So I finally got to enjoy having a day off! On Monday, Barbez (my dog) and I went hiking around Mead's Quarry, which is now part of Ijam's Nature Center. I actually hadn't toured that part of Ijam's yet because I am usually drawn towards the riverwalk. It was a lovely late afternoon and I got some really stunning photos for my upcoming series of mosaics. I'm still playing around with ideas, but basically they will focus on the environment and how people interact and change their "natural" surroundings. I thought Mead's Quarry was a great example. It was opened in the late 1800's, and used as a quarry until 1978. After that, it was basically used as a dump until the city purchased the land and decided to clean it up. So even though these are beautiful scenes from nature, the landscape has all been completely altered by people....

My favorite find is shown to the right, it basically looks like gravel, but it is an area that I assume used to be part of the dumping ground. The dirt shimmered in the light from all of the broken bits of mirror, glass and tile. I stumbled across an accidental mosaic!