Mosaic!

10Jun11

The reason for the mosaic: to build on what is already sustainable and the idea is to work toward reshaping our discourse of HIV into something integrated – where everyone can be included in society.

After months upon months of waiting to implement the last part to the HIV/AIDS project in my town, the time is finally here! We’ve spent the entire week cleaning, and organizing the tile, prepping the wall, and all to find out, we have to repeat a couple of these steps as we’re putting the mosaic to a more prominent area in front of the school. This is good news, although it means we lost an entire day of making the measurements. However, the second time around is already going SO MUCH better.

I’ve been terrified with this mosaic – not worried but actually incredibly frightened.  Mosaics are permanent things and they’re something that I pretend to know how to do. Part of me was terrified that people would find me out that I didn’t know what I was doing. The other part to me, just wants to do a good job, and was terrified that I wouldn’t do that.

I all honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing, and that’s the beauty of it. The project started a year ago, with calculating materials needed and writing a grant. My previous mosaic projects have all been small: I bought tile as needed, and none of them were made to be outside. So what was I thinking adding the planning element and doubling the size of the mosaic to be twice the size of anything I’d done before?

The cool thing, though: at the beginning of Spring, I drew the scaled plan for the mosaic, which took two weeks of dread and slow, meticulous thinking. Then, we had to wait for approval, and then, the organization decided we should find a different wall, but that ended up not working. Among other issues, Spring’s been a lot of waiting.

But now, it’s all falling into place, and it’s wonderful. There’s open discussions with the organization; we’ve been modifying – for artistic purposes the design with the art teacher, and with the groundskeeper, he’s helping with the technical application of material. Today, without any urging, we had the entire camp working on tile preparation (that was really cool)! The other thing? I surprised myself by putting my tile-laying skills to good use with finding the center, and we made chalk-rope using yarn, crushed chalk and colored pencils to make straight lines. Tomorrow, it’s another day working towards the mosaic!

The experience is this: people coming together to support the spaces and the combination of many different components….hence, the reason to be obsessed with mosaics and especially mosaics as public art.

This is such a huge wonder to work with so many different people and to get to put together a mosaic, - everyone excited about the project.

So here’s to an experience where you have the opportunity develop the skills necessary and the demands of being qualified are arbitrary head distinctions to be smashed into chalk dust and snapped on a wall!

(To give you an idea of the current life: My sitemate and I are doing a day camp; within the camp, we’re doing the mosaic; we’ve finally begun remodeling the dormitory to be wheelchair accessible; everyday has included preparing towards MASCOT Camp. Click here for a sample of what we’re currently trying to do.)

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