Typically students in our weekend Mosaics workshop create small mosaic palettes designed to be taken home. This year’s workshop had a more collective project. Inspired by renowned mosaics artist Isaiah Zagar's (very distinctive) style, Yestermorrow instructor Bette Ann Libby envisioned a mosaics piece that stretched the length of a 30-foot wall here on-campus and resonated with our hands-on approach to teaching. The project was ambitious and was completed in under one week with the help of the students, interns, and work-traders.

Completed mural

Bette Ann shares the details of the project with us: 'Fifteen people worked on the 30-foot long, 8-foot high mosaic wall. My sketch for the design used figures taken from photos from the Yestermorrow website. Mirror and tile (that were being discarded) were collected from local businesses and friends. We used about 15 gallon-sized containers of cut-up mirror and 25 laundry-sized bins of ceramic tile scraps!! The sketch was painted as a line drawing on the wall. Then each line was outlined in cut mirror rectangles. After the mirror outline was complete, the rest of the wall was designed using broken tile. The following day, the grout was applied in-between each piece of tile and mirror using colored grout which we mixed on-site. Although the design was pre-determined, there was a lot of latitude for the students to express themselves in the placement of the tile and the color of the grout. The group was very inventive, hard-working, and resourceful. We learned from one another and accomplished the transformation of the arched wall facing Route 100 in front of Yestermorrow.'
Join us on-campus August 27 from 4:30 - 6:30 PM for a public opening in celebration of the mosaic installation.

Nine students cut glass and tile, mixed and applied grout/cement,
and hodgepodgedly formed the mosaic construction scene

Mirror is applied around the outline of the mural figures

Mosaic progression: outline, tile placement, colored grout

Betty Ann paints the final outline