I bet that title has grabbed your attention for a moment.
Well it was last year when I took part in a group exhibition entitled Warriors & Queens, that I got the idea to create a cut out figure of a warrior. I knew exactly what I wanted and went about designing the warrior using my daughter as a model and then painstakingly using a Stanley knife to cut around the marked out design.
It took me ages to cut out my warrior and I remember thinking to myself, there must be another way! I went on to cut out more shapes really enjoying the outcome but swearing profusely at the amount of time it was taking me to cut out these interesting designs.
Finally, the lightbulb moment appeared when I was commissioned to work with a school where individual animal shapes were required for each child. Imagine working with a class of 10 children, twice a week, for 3 weeks with each child having a DIFFERENT mosaic to work on every time. The prep work for this was giving me a headache just thinking about it.
So it wasn’t long before I remembered an artist friend of mine using a jigsaw to cut out her shapes, however hers were much bigger and the shapes were more fluid. I had small intricate shapes like butterflies and birds to create but could this be my answer?
I went straight to my garage as I knew I had seen a jigsaw in there at some point. I found the box of discarded tools but the jigsaw had no plug attached to it. Damn! Dad to the rescue! My dad is my superhero – he loves to tinker and put things together, which is probably where my love of mosaic stems from when I think about it. Anyway, Dad was able to offer me his own jigsaw to use and because I had no idea how to use it he gave me a very thorough lesson.
If you have never used a jigsaw in your life I would urge you to try it, even just to cut a straight line. It’s exhilarating!
So once I became more confident using my new found tool my mind started opening up to what I could create. The pic below is my latest creation which will be appearing on your tv screens in a few months.
I am also thinking about my next series of mosaics centred around my love of dance. OMG I am excited already!
Let me know in the comments what shapes you would like to see me create and why. I’m curious.