Space and Spaceballs,
2014-2021
George, my significant other, is seriously into astronomy. His house is full of telescopes and their accessories- cameras, weather equipment and computers, etc. I spend a lot of time there and was inspired to create space art to counterbalance his scientific universe.
2014 This piece lives with George, outside in summer. It was my first space ball attempt. 10-inch diameter on a ceramic ball I got for $4 at a Mashnee yard sale.
Spaceball #2- Little Blue Planet 2015- 5-inch diameter on foam/mesh thinset. It lives with my friend and neighbor Sarah Lynch.
Jupiter the Gaseous- 2016 8-inch diameter, made of all glass slivers. Lives with George the astronomer.
Spaceball with Comet- 2017 6-inch diameter; lives with George. This one is the most cosmic; made primarily of mirror and dichroic glass. The background tiles are triangles cut from sheets of a special mirror that ranges in color from light gray to bright blue. It is flecked with gold, and some of the pieces are all gold.
Little Red Planet- 2017 6-inch diameter, made on a candlepin bowling ball donated by my neighbor Ronnie. It happily lives with me.
All the Blues- 2018 6 inches, lives with my photographer friend Jean Granick; was a trade for a wonderful photo of a sunflower
The Arrival (named by George)- 2018 There was a shop in the Boston Markep that sells "local" trivets' breadboards etc for tourists. I drooled over the beautiful stone "harvested from New England Farms." I inquired and went to the factory in Lowell, MA and bought $27 worth of sliced fieldstone scrap for $.50/lb. Loved the cut insides, glittery with mica and maybe pyrite.
M87: The Galactic Sewer, Our Ulyimate Destination (title by George)-2019 This was inspired by the first photo of a black hole that made news headlines in 2019. George made sure I knew that our Galaxy and all our DNA would be sucked into this particular black hole.
River Nebula-2017 This was a save after much rework. I was determined to use smalti for the fist time, but knew very little about how to use it or hardly anything about andamento. The first iteration was awful- it was Disney's Cinderella's dress floating in an Alice in Wonderland maisma. I removed most of the center, added a vintage Navaho turquoise necklace my mother had given me decades before and tried to make some andamento sense of the rest. Lesson learned: study up before you start!