Back in Ithaca, the public art mosaic is moving right along. As tiles from all the different schools are fired, we have been staining them. Sometimes I go out to a school and stain their tiles on site. Other times older students have been staining the tiles they made and helping out to stain tiles made by the elementary school kids. All of the tiles are labeled on the back so that they can be re-assembled, the way they were made, after being bisque fired. Each group of tiles comes with a map that corresponds to the various labeling systems that the different art teachers came up with. It's fun to see how each person develops a unique system, and each system works. We are using mason stains in a limited palette of earth tones. We have a very dark brown which is almost black, a chocolaty brown, and a rusty red. We are sponging the stain on each tile, completely covering the top surface and all the side edges. Then, using a clean damp sponge, stain is removed from the raised designs and allowed to remain in all the crevices. This technique enhances the three dimensionality of the tiles and really brings the designs to life.
Below are some pictures of the process. Here's Martha Frommelt, president of the Fine Arts Booster Group, writing on the back of a tile with an underglaze pencil. Here are students at Ithaca High school applying the stains. And here is what some of the tiles looked like once they have been bisqued and stained, but not yet re-fired to the cone 6 we will eventually achieve.
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