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Well, after having so many rabbits showing up on my pots,

rabbit-casserole

when I came across an old copy of Watership Down by Richard Adams

I felt I should reread it.

I loved it again and could hardly set it down.

No sooner had I finished (and urged my daughter to read it) than she found and captured a domesticated rabbit in the park!

Her name is Alice and not only is she beautiful, she’s got a lovely personality.

alice-outside

Now I guess I have a better model than this one who moved into our yard this spring

wild-rabbit-in-our-garden by the way, the arrow is part of a weather vane in our yard- quite a ways from the rabbit but serendipitously pointing at the rabbit!

Also, he was hungrily looking at our little vegetable patch.

So what is it about rabbits?

Well, we love the Medicine Cards book by Jamie Sands and David Carson.

and what it says about Rabbit is this:

…“Rabbit medicine people are so afraid of tragedy, illness, disaster and being taken that they call those very fears to them to teach them lessons. …. Here is the lesson. If you pulled Rabbit [card], stop talking about horrible things happening and get rid of “what if” in your vocabulary. This card may signal a time of worry about the future …

The paralyzed feeling which Rabbit experiences when being stalked is Rabbit in the contrary position. If you have tried to resolve a situation in your life and are unable to, you may be feeling frozen in motion. This could indicate a time to wait for the forces of the universe to start moving again. It could also indicate the need to stop and take a rest. It will always indicate a time when you need to re-evaluate the process you are undergoing and to rid yourself of any negative feelings, barriers, or duress. Simply put, you cannot have your influence felt until you rearrange your way of seeing the present set of circumstances. It is the way in which you handle problems that allows you to succeed…”

Watership Down calls that frozen state “tharn” and you can get locked in it

I do feel we are/I am in this state recently and admit, I find it helpful to learn these things- that we’ve got some rabbit energy going right now.

However, I still wonder if that’s why I’m drawn to them right now to put on my pots; what they mean to me personally perhaps without all the reading. alice-on-hind-legs

Certainly I’m excited to see “wild” animals in the city and visually, I love drawing the texture of their fur and their ears and faces. alice-cleans-her-whiskers

I wish I could capture more of their motion.

curved-bunny

Alice, when we put her in a little fenced in area outside, does this lovely little leap where she seems to kick out once she’s in the air. It gives the illusion of flight, of a momentary suspension in the air.

It’s wonderful; I wish I could do it.

Ah, there it is, perhaps I’m hoping, after waiting quietly that once the universe does start moving again, I get to fly.

Just a little.

I got another panel up today but I thought I’d also talk a little about the process.

I had a friend ask me about laying it out and I realized there are several ways. This is what I recommend:

Get paper as big as you can- butcher or kraft paper is ideal but if you have newprint or something, you can tape pieces together to cover your space to be mosaic’d.

Next, draw your design right onto it while it’s on the wall (if you can.) Take down the paper in sections- that is, if you are working on a really big space as I am for the bath surround, and my table is 32” wide, I have been cutting my design into strips around that wide. Note how I am choosing natural borders along which to break up my design.

in-the-midst-of-putting-it-up-white-is-mastic

Then you can either designate a table and work on it in pieces that are the size of the table top

OR buy sheets of styrofoam insulation- the thick pink works best but it’s a bit costly or very thin plywood (so it doesn’t weigh a lot). The plywood tends to warp and arch.

One artist who advised me, lays the whole thing out in sections on multiple styrofoam sheets and stacks them on top of eachother until she is ready to put the whole thing up on the wall.

After the broken tile is laid out, I hold it all together with clear shelf paper that I get at Menard’s (though you can buy special tape or use regular tape but that gets pricey). Then, as each section is done, I cut the mosaic into 12-18 inch square sections; again following natural lines and borders using an exacto blade. That is one good reason to put cardboard under the paper- so you don’t cut up your table top. If you use the styrofoam, it is great for absorbing the cuts.

laid-out-mosaic-cut-into-liftable-sections

I apply mastic (that’s the adhesive- you buy in buckets) to the wall and lift the sections of mosaic and push them onto the sticky wall. This process is A LOT easier with two people, one holding up the section of mosaic and the other guiding it into place and pressing it into the mastic. But it can be done alone as I have been finding out. You can even use your feet as I do at the very bottom.

I suggest starting with smaller sections until you see the problems inherent.

Start at the bottom and leave yourself some wiggle room as the mosaic tends to expand and also to distort as it stretches and sags a small amount.

Because of this I also advise applying the mastic a bit past your edges when you can. It is easy enough to take a little putty knife and clean off excess after the tiles are up but much harder to lift all the tiles up that don’t have mastic under them and try to get some under there. mastic-detail

* Note: If your work space is a ways from your mosaic site, and you don’t have the insulation boards, you can slide/lift your sections onto various boards and trays, even layers of newspaper and moved them there.

You’ll note I often have strips of masking tape. Sometimes I make a spiral or something and I want it to really stay together; perhaps I don’t have time to lay out the filler/background right then. A quick strip of masking tape is a good way to keep the piece in place. It’s also a bit stickier than the shelf paper and the more matte and rough a tile’s surface is, the less it sticks to shelf paper. Conversely, shiny, smooth tile sticks almost too much.

Here is the newest section up and with the tape removed. section-put-up-and-tape-peeled-off

I won’t be teaching in August, but I hope to catch up with a couple of posts I missed during my classes. I am also hoping to finish this mosaic!!

RABBITS RABBITS EVERYWHERE

Back at work on the Mosaic for the bath surround