Shute Park Library Pavers are Installed!

Once again I lucked out with the weather for an install! Though the temps were pretty low in the mornings, it was dry, and the sun came out each day for glorious afternoons. Thanks to Laticrete's "One-Step" method, using the latex additive with the Permacolor grout proved to have two values. In addition to having our mortar be the exact same color as the grout we'd be using, the latex allowed us to install at temps as low as 35 degrees F. And did we come close! Tuesday morning dawned close to freezing. Peter Bral, my excellent tile installer, joined me at the library at 10 am to get started. Mixing, spreading and placing the mosaics was the quicker half of the install. We were done by about 12:30 pm.

Final Work on Shute Park Library Pavers

Installation is next week! We are down to finishing up the four final pavers. This week I had help from my "J" team— Jan, Jo and Janie. Sue had already bolted to sunny Arizona, and Sandy is unfortunately down with a bronchial infection. But thanks to her stash of some light blue Cinca tile, we are able to finish the backgrounds of the frog totem pavers! I always aim to order more than enough material for projects, but it's a very difficult task. Apparently when doing the original spec, I thought I might use more of the glazed blue tile in those backgrounds than we ended up doing. But the Cinca coordinates well with the Briare Mazurka unglazed porcelain. Local volunteer photographer extraordinare Rick Paulson came by the studio on Wednesday to photograph us working. Here are the shots:

Shute Park Mosaic Paver Project

On February 1 we held the first public workshop day to begin fabrication of 15 pavers for the entrance plaza of the newly renovated Shute Park branch library in Hillsboro. Many people participated and everyone had a lot of fun doing mosaic! The second Saturday workshops were cancelled because of snow! The record snowstorm closed just about everything the weekend of February 8th, including the library. I rescheduled two other opportunities this week, on Wednesday and Friday. Our final day is Saturday, and there is a full slate of volunteers signed up to help out.

This project was funded by a grant from Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Friends of the Hillsboro Library and the City of Hillsboro.

Here are a few photos of the project in progress: