Continuing on with my mosaic adventure in Philly last weekend, this is part 2. If you missed Part 1, you can see it here.
This is Trish who was Isaiah’s assistant for our workshop. Trish has her own mosaic business, Made in Mosaic, and creates beautiful spaces in and around Philadelphia!
I couldn’t resist snapping this pic of Isaiah with Nick, a teaching artist who plans to travel to India next month to teach kids there how to make murals similar to the one we made over the weekend. Many of the other attendees had similar plans to recreate this mural techinique, an art teacher and librarian from Springfield who plan to create a mural in the school’s library, for instance.
Day 2 was spent mixing and dying cement, then using it as a grout for the tile! It was like being a kid again and having the chance to play in the mud!! The results were beautiful!!
This is Steph, who also does lots of mosaic work, and happened to sign up for the workshop (along with her husband) as her birthday present. It was amazing to learn how the other attendees came to know about the workshop — Isaiah told us there have been people from as faraway as Alaska before!
And here is the nearly finished mural!!!
“If we have some time,” Isaiah said, “I’d like you to see Watkins Street. It’s important to me.”
“What is Watkins Street?”, I asked.
“I keep asking myself the same thing.”
Watkins Street, my dear friends, could be described as Isaiah Zagar’s greatest structure of mosaic glory. 10,000 square feet. It is not open to the public, but here are some photos.
This is the downstairs:
And this is the upstairs:
What a treat it was to see this space!!!
We finished the workshop with Isaiah giving a demonstration of how he makes the medallions for the murals he creates, before heading back to the Philadelphia Magic Gardens where we each went on our separate ways — perhaps to recreate a bit of this magic in our own hometowns!
Here is a short time-lapse video of our mural creating process!
oh wow. I want to go! What an inspiring workshop