Jan's Mermaid Mural

Latest Mural Project in Studio
Jan's Mermaid

Next to the door, going into the old house, is a portion of wall we had left covered in hardibacker for a furture mural. Keeping with the ocean theme of the existing mural in the studio, Jan projected this mermaid on the wall and colored her in with chalk. Then began the delicious collection of baubles and beads. Collecting a veritable "Pirates of the Carribean" treasure chest of goodies to mosaic with is Jan's forte. Problem arose when we discussed how to mosiac our mermaid's body parts. Wouldn't it be nice to make them in 2-D clay? Yes of course, but while Jan and I like to sculpt neither one of us has any experience sculpting the human body.

What to do?Enter our 26 year old friend, Nora Schwaller, who is finishing her BFA in Ceramics at San Jose State. Nora, aka "Bird Girl" (self explanatory when you view her body of artwork) can sculpt the human body, no problemo! See below. Nora's not bad when it comes to birds either:)
This is Nora hard at work in the SJSU studio with her Bird Woman still in progress. Legs still need to be sculpted.
Sooooooooooooo.....We bribed Nora with a play day in our studio and a few munchies. She graciously showed up prepared to give us lessons in coil building. Funny, we never got to the lessons. No, we twisted Nora's arm to help us with our new mural and watched with rapture as she sculpted the arms and hands for Jan's Mermaid.
Arms will go here.
And look like this...Impressive work in one afternoon, yes, yes, yes! It pays to have talented friends in the sculpting department.

Jan worked on the face and neck.

And one of these days we are going to get the pieces glazed and up on the wall and be off and running. Thanks for your help Miss Nora!