Mosaics Project: the official launch!

Regular readers will be aware that over the past two terms I have been working with a group of enthusiastic special needs people at the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre. The group, with some others from the centre, have been working on creating a community garden, and the group of people I worked with were specifically concentrating on the sensory garden. The garden includes a bed of fragrant plants and herbs, two bench seats and mosaic pavers made by each participant being installed in the pebble pathway, and a group mosaic mounted on the wall. You can check out previous about the making of the mosaics HERE.

The theme of the project was Literacy and Learning through Community Gardening, a great concept, and after many weeks of hard, and fun, work, the mosaics have been finally installed and the project was officially launched on Wednesday with all the stakeholders present, including sponsors, funders, community supporters, creators, Neighbourhood Centre employees and the range of people who actively worked to create the project, such as my little group. Greens councillour, and now deputy mayor, Belinda Coates officially launched the project with a short speech and the cutting of the ribbon.

It was a great afternoon, and the group were so proud of their achievements, seeing their mosaic pieces within the garden and observing the overall enthusiasm from all the people attending the function. A couple of them even made speeches along with the project co-ordinator Kate Owen.

As well as the sensory garden the overall project also includes a series of wicking beds for growing herbs, vegetables and flowers, so the project does have a long term learning aim through harvesting and maintaining the overall garden. And the added bonus being that as the garden grows and becomes more established it will be a lovely community space that anybody can access for some relaxing and time out.

The afternoon finished with afternoon tea which included a lemon slice which was actually ‘lemony’ – yum! The function room walls were also adorned with lots of photo essays of the project as it progressed and was an interesting and fun way to look back at the development of the project in its entirety.

Personally, it was a great experience for me… I had a little exposure to mosaics many years ago, and with funding from Regional Arts Victoria was able to partake in a weekend workshop with mosaics expert Helen Bodycomb to refresh and refine my skills for the project. Helen remained ‘on call’ for any advise, which was great. Overall, it was a great project professionally, but also personally satisfying, with a fantastic community outcome.

Following are few photo galleries of the afternoon – enjoy 🙂

People gathering in anticipation of the launch

Admiring the mosaics!

They are ssooo touch feely! (this is Helen with whom I did the workshop)

Discussing the group mosaic piece with Malcolm Sanders, Central Highlands representative for Regional Arts Victoria.

And to finish some overall pics of the installed mosaics 🙂

Mosaics Project – an update

Mosaics Project at the Ballarat Neighbourhood House.

Hello everyone, hope you have all had a good week.

Just checking in with a quick update on the mosaics project I have been working on for the past two school terms.

The group meets once a week for two and a half hours and we have accomplished so much in this time – a mosaiced garden paver each, and a group mural which we almost finished by the end of the last sessions. Four of the segments are ready to grout next week, and the two will be ready by the end of the next session.

So, I couldn’t resist doing a test run of how the overall mural is coming together, and I must say it looks great and the students were really excited to see the overall effect.

Have a great weekend – and see you for the Sunday studio visit 🙂

Mosaics Project at the Ballarat Neighourhood Centre

Regular readers will know I am co-ordinating a community art project at the Ballarat Neighbourhood House. The great news it is all on schedule – the individual mosaics project is almost complete…. it won’t be long till we move onto the group mosaic mural.

It has been such a great project with the students being so enthusiastic about learning something new within the context of literacy and numeracy.

Here’s some pics of the almost finished work – some pavers have been grouted and need a final clean-up, the others have been cemented to the concrete pavers and will be grouted next week.

They will look fantastic once they are installed in the community garden.

Needs grouting

Needs grouting

Needs grouting

Finished Paver – drying

Student grouting their paver

Term Three and a Continuation of Art Projects

Art Projects in Ballarat

As regular readers will know besides making art which I like to EXHIBIT and designing under my DeeDeeDeesigns brand, I also teach and run workshops in and around Ballarat.

The last few weeks I have been on term break from teaching, but now I am well and truly back in the swing.

As well as running ceramic classes and workshops for my ClayMotion business, I have also been involved in a community gardening project with the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre – you can check out an earlier post HERE.

I am co-ordinating the mosaics portion of the gardening project, and today we began mounting our mesh mosaic designs onto the concrete pavers which will be installed into the garden – there was much excitement, it is starting to become real!!

Stay tuned for further developments 🙂

Mosaics Project in Ballarat

Mosaics Project at the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre

As some readers may know I am involved in a mosaics project working with special needs people at the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre.

The intention is to create a sensory garden, and within the garden there will be mosaic garden pavers and a wall mural.

It began two weeks go with planting some sensory plants in the garden such as rosemary, mint, sage and thyme.

The following week we researched and chose designs. We transferred them onto larger sheets of paper the same size as the pavers and coloured them with the colours everyone wanted to use for their mosaic design.

This week we began to lay and glue our tiles to the mesh we are using to mount the designs onto the pavers. This is a great way of working because the designs we completed last week can be placed under the mesh and easily followed when applying the tiles.

We are using glass tiles for these pavers, rather than ceramic, because being on the ground in a gravel path they may receive a little foot traffic and gravel debris. If the tiles get a little scratched this will be less noticeable as the colour of the glass goes all the way through the tile as opposed to ceramic where the colour/glaze sits on the surface only.

We will continue laying our design for the next sessions, and then after the break it will be time to mount them on the pavers.

The group are really engaged in the project which makes it very enjoyable – stay tuned for future updates 🙂