Mother of All Herons, hand-made tiles, architectural tile installation by Tammy Vitale.

Architectural tilework simply means tiles that are made for site-specific installation.  Sounds grandiose, doesn’t it?

This is a picture of the cottage before we had the new room built. Then more pictures of the new room (white) and the interior that we’re working on. This outside wall is now inside and the upper left corner is now finished (which was yesterday’s post’s main picture).  It only took me 4 years to finish that.  (!). 

Yesterday I worked on the floor some more.  I got the hand-made floor tiles that had come up reattached (I hope – I’ll know once I go visit today), and put down all the rest of the tiles that we had cut and the one section of the floor that remained that just need to be laid down, not cut.  What remains is the tiles around the front door side of the room and then grouting.  Oh yes,  a few more tiles along the top of the heron.  When I made that for outdoors, I wasn’t really concerned about edges.  It was my first large piece and at that point I also didn’t pay much attention to making sure the edges are straight (I learned – actually I learned a whole lot about architectural tile installation just by putting up this one piece).  I made this particular architectural installation in 3 panels, and learned that I don’t like the panel effect. 

When I made Chesapeake I laid out the full 7.5′ x 11′ in one slab before I cut it.  It’s about as big as I’m going to be able to make a piece since it just barely fit in my garage.  In order to be able to get into the middle of it, I left a 2′ x 4′ panel open (up where the sun is) until I’d finished sculpting all of the middle part.

Am going to DC tomorrow to interview for a full time job doing what I did professionally before I allowed myself to be a full time artist:  community based organizing.  I am trusting the Universe to not give me a job offer for something that won’t work.  I’ve mentioned this in my myspace blog – said I wasn’t going to do it.  But I’m real aware that, from my vantage point right now, it looks like the bank account could use a little help.  Perhaps I’m not trusting the process enough to take care of me.  Which will mean it won’t.   I’m not totally clear about how this "believe it into being" works.  What I am trusting is that I won’t get an offer unless it’s what I’m supposed to do right now.  And I can still do my art.  I will report more when I know more about it. 

For a holiday letter to Santa that will tickel your funny bone, check out the Dec 11 post at Random Speak (I can’t find a permalink…so scroll to the 11th if it doesn’t land you there).

And I reconnected with Sage, from AEM, who has changed her blog where she daily posts poetry.

thought for the day:  Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a map that I can just follow and things will work like they’re supposed to.  And sometimes I think that would be awfully boring.  What do you think?