Coming to the end of the year
Making art in Barcelona.
This year as sped by, but it’s been a good year. We had a fantastic trip to Spain early this fall, and it included lots of art, both looking at and making! I wrote a travel blog chronicling that. https://fabamoespana18.wordpress.com
Back in the studio, I finished the current fine art piece, in plenty of time to enter it into the Society of American Mosaic Artists’ annual juried exhibition. Which gave me something to update my website with! You can check out the images of that work here: https://www.lynnadamo.com/a-rakes-progress/
Here is the statement I wrote for the jury entry:
My art practice focuses on taking rusty found objects and giving them a second life. When I started making art, my main concern was to create visually appealing compositions with dimensional durable materials, and little more. As I age and my experience deepens, both in life and with the skills of my craft, I see a deeper connection between my attraction to decay and decomposition with the possibility of renewal and regrowth.
This lowly rake, after having completed its service as a garden tool, lost its handle and was discarded. A friend discovered it, partly buried, while on a walk in the forest adjacent to our neighborhood. Some people wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but she spotted the potential it held for me.
As I brushed and scrubbed off layers of dirt and rust, some of the rake’s original blue green paint revealed itself. This discovery gave me the starting point for choosing my color and material palette: I would begin with turquoise smalti. To complement that, the tones in the rusted steel inspired me to reach for my new stash of Australian mookaite, which was waiting for the right opportunity. The warm earth tones of travertine completed the palette.
Now this old tool plays the starring role in my mosaic composition. Unlike Tom Rakewell in Hogarth’s original “A Rake’s Progress”, who started lowly, gained riches, squandered them and never recovered, this rake has gone from riches to rags, to riches once again.
A Rake’s Progress, detail.
