I don't know about you, but I love what I do for my J-O-B. Being an artist, facing the challenges of my work table every day - this is invigorating for me. I know a senior software engineer who can talk poetical about what he does. [Is poetical a word? Yes, actually it is. Cool, thought I made it up!]
There is part of what I do that involves trying things out...experimenting. Asking the questions: 1)how do I know this glue will work? or 2)what would happen if it got wet in a flood? You know, important questions like those. Last post I talked about wedi board and how it boasts of being waterproof and stuff. I got to thinking about that. Should I take 'their' word for it? Or should I experiment?
When I was teaching color mixing classes I would get questions from my students...questions like, "Mrs. Smith, what would happen if I mixed these colors together?" or "Mrs. Smith, can you mix black and yellow to get dark yellow?" I loved this! Always I would answer: Let's see! And I'd have my students test it out for themselves right then and there. They learned that if you mix the primaries of red, blue and yellow together you get an interesting neutral. They learned that if you mix black with yellow you get a kind of weird green. Not a darker yellow. Try it for yourself and see. Makes me want to teach color mixing classes again.
I got to thinking about wedi board. What does happen when it gets wet? So I did an experiment. In this first photo is a little piece of wedi about 3/4" wide by 2" long. The next photo shows it on its side so you can see the outer layers of dark gray cement and the inner layer of rigid styrofoam. I put this piece of wedi in a dish of water, submerged it and left it for more than 24 hours. I was curious to know if the cement layers would soften, flake or peel off. Well, after the alloted time, it is as you see it - nothing at all happened to it. It is indeed waterproof. Cool!
Then I got to thinking - what about wedi that already had tiles glued to it? How would that hold up submerged in water? I already had a small 2 1/4" by 2 3/4" piece that I had used to test-glue my tiny ceramic tiles onto before I did the large circular works. I used Weldbond and was quite pleased with the holding power. Short of using a flat head screwdriver to pry them off I used my fingers to try to take them off...they stayed put. So I took the test piece [next photo] and submerged that
one for 24 hours and got interesting results.
First thing I noticed while the piece was still wet was that the glue that showed around the tiles had turned back to its original white color. I took the piece out of the water and let it dry until the next day. Next morning I saw that the glue had again dried clear. Then I tried to pry up the tiles. I was curious to know how they faired...only one tile came off...the others are as firmly affixed as before the flood. I noticed that the tile that came off wasn't flat on the bottom and that the glue hadn't actually come into contact with the entire tile...could that have made a difference? On the big 30" diameter works I did on wedi, I put plenty of glue on each and every tile...I even "glue-grouted" between the tiles to give the piece extra protection and sealing.
Actually I'm quite pleased with this experiment. I'm going to begin a new work later this month, again using wedi board as the support. Only this time I'm going to use transparent smalti [glass] tesserae. I was curious to know how best to affix the smalti to the wedi and whether or not to cover the gray surface before I began. Yep! I did another experiment.
I had 5 tiles so I did 5 areas.
1. top left: I had read that you could use thinset as an adhesive so I tried that. It didn't work...I was able to pop the tile off - took a bit of strength, but it did come off.
2. The second spot, top right, I applied the tile to the wedi using Weldbond. I wanted to see how the tile looked sitting just on the gray surface. Although Weldbond is pure opaque white when applied, it dries crystal clear. I think the transparent tile on the gray surface is too dark.
3. bottom left: I put down a layer of thinset, let it dry then sanded it, then used Weldbond to apply the tile. This works pretty well. The tile is there to stay but there is still not quite the bright reflectiveness I want.
4. bottom center [yellow tile]: again a layer of thinset; let it dry and sand it. I then painted over it with white acrylic paint and let it dry. I used Weldbond to glue the tile. My goodness that tile is there to stay! And I like the way the combination of the thinset and white paint completely covers the dark gray. This is the method I'll use.
5. bottom right: I painted a layer of white acrylic paint over the wedi and let it dry. I used Weldbond to glue the tile. This is okay except you can see the waffle pattern in the wedi.
Isn't experimenting fun! Scientists must love what they do.
You're probably wondering how those large works are hung on the wall? My husband helped me to bolt z-bars to the back [on the recommendation of the head of the installation team for the client] before the tile work was started. Z-bars come in two pieces, one goes on the work and one on the wall. The bar was screwed down with the screws going in from the front all the way through the wedi. Weldbond was used to provide extra holding power both for the screws and the
bar itself. You're probably wondering why we put the hanging apparatus on after I'd sketched the work rather than before? In this case, because the works were so large and circular, I wanted to be certain that the bar would be in the correct horizontal placement to the sketch. For me this was the best way. After the screws were counter-sunk a bit, I applied some thinset over, sanded and proceeded with the work.
I was asked by someone - what was my favorite aspect of these two works [ "End of Day," "Rise of Day"]? Although I enjoy the process of any work, I have to say it was the foliage work in "Rise of Day" - the photo at the top of this post. My plan was to place all the tiles diamond-shaped on the surface, but also to give the foliage a sense of movement and fullness. I think the movement was achieved by where each color was placed.
Oh, and I do like the graceful curve of the trunk of the tree and how using the dark brown tiles gave the roots a sense of strength and permanence...giving the idea that though this tree grows at the edge of a sandy beach, it will not move, that it is firmly rooted. Kind of makes me think that although our lives are surrounded by shifting sands, we can remain rooted to our ideals and beliefs.
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