Keith Stubbs Mosaics

I'm not sure how much of it is attributed to luck, but this spring has brought some of the most brilliant color in my short tenure as a novice gardener. Last year's stragglers, including my lacecap hydrangea, have kept pace with the perennial stalwarts (hostas, Confederate jasmine, Japanese holly ferns, etc.). I was excited a few weeks ago when I noticed that the hydrangea, which did not produce any blooms at all last year, was starting to bud out. After a day of steady rain last week, the blooms really started to pop. The last time this plant flowered, I was inspired to create one of my earliest mosaics. I remember being excited to use millefiori for the first time. A few lessons I learned from this piece were 1. carefully plan your design before cutting and gluing your tesserae, 2. be sure you have enough tile of the color you're using on said unplanned design before you start cutting and gluing and 3. be patient! Number 3 is still the most difficult lesson for me to foll...

My newest piece, which was finished earlier this week, portrays a rooster perched atop a hill. The rooster itself is not an original design, but came from a picture I took in Provincetown, Massachusetts a few summers ago. A large contingent of Portuguese sailors and their families settled in Provincetown in the early nineteenth century, and their cultural influence is still apparent in the village today. One such symbol of this heritage is a rooster painted on the pavement at the end of the public pier (as pictured below). According to legend, the rooster became a symbol of good fortune when a poor man was saved from death for a crime he didn't commit. Because my feeble memory of the story would not do it justice, I did a quick online search and found the following at Nancy's Portugal Site http://home.online.no/~nancys/portugal/country/rooster.html : The Rooster from Barcelos The Rooster from Barcelos has become a national symbol. It symbolises "The ...

My latest completed work, which was finished a couple of weeks ago, was created for my friends' newborn son whose bedroom has a panda theme. It is composed of glass tile on a 10" x 10" MDF panel.