Since my last post, “Make Your Mark” has really taken shape!
This pair of hands belongs to an assistant stamping blank wooden tiles with archival ink and placing them in a grid matrix to be photographed. The stamps were manufactured using images from the tiles hand-illustrated by AMS students and staff. By generating a variety of colours, coverages, and saturations, the stamped tiles will be very helpful in realizing the finished composition.
“Make Your Mark” is composed of two sizes of wooden tile. The larger size is made from silkscreening select images onto large boards and cutting those boards into squares to generate a lot of variation within the colour palette of a selected image. This random variation within a chosen group of colours will improve the vibrancy and resolution of the finished piece. In the image above, repurposed cardboard is being machine cut into forms that will hold and identify the large wooden tiles during photography and placement.
My father, a nonagenarian and enthusiastic helper, placing large tiles into cardboard forms at the family dinner table.
Above is a printout of the piece to use as a reference during the manufacturing process. Each square in the grid will be a 3 ft. x 3 ft. frame. The large square images are the “features” I have chosen. They and several others were also used in the stamping process I described briefly. After many tweaks and revisions, the printout above is composed of 12,000 individual images.
Here is a photo of the manufacturing process for the custom frames that will fit together to compose “Make Your Mark”.
In this photo, two assistants are gluing the pieces of the assembled mosaic to frames, one piece at a time.
Some frames that have had the tiles glued to them and await varnishing.
A view inside the covered area where the panels are sealed with an archival varnish.
43 panels and 12,000 tiles later, this is “Make Your Mark” laid out for a visual check – with my dog Niko for scale – before it is packed up, taken to Lynnwood, Washington, and installed in Alderwood Middle School; where I hope everyone who sees it appreciates its unique beauty and everyone who had a hand in its manufacture feels a well-earned sense of pride. Thanks AMS!
