There are many aspects to making a project of this scale. Here are some.
The idea behind MosaicGloucester is to create a visual representation of Gloucester’s oral history, to tell its layered tales —through its citizens— in a lasting, accessible, and engaging way. There are monuments and plaques throughout town, but they might engage only the history-geek among us. MosaicGloucester is a community-based piece of art in a public location that people of all ages can enjoy, interact with, learn from, and own, a draw for residents as well as for visitors.
The imagery depicted on the mosaic panels is drawn from interviews of local residents as well as from historical research and readings. The Sawyer Free Library has a series of oral histories, the Cape Ann Museum has an extensive archive, there are piles of books about Gloucester. The people of Gloucester themselves are plenty colorful and full of love for our city that they’re eager to share, warts and all.
E Pluribus Unum — Out of many, one. What could be more democratic than a mosaic made of many tiles working together to create a piece of art?
Our mayor makes her own tile to contribute to MosaicGloucester.
Many of the tiles included in MosaicGloucester were made by community members at pop-up workshops. Locations have included: St. Peter’s Fiesta (pictured here), City Hall, Fisherman’s Wives Sea-to-Supper dinner, Harvest Music Fest, Art Haven and Gloucester High School.
There are some glass and mirror tiles included in the MosaicGloucester panels, but the majority of the tiles were made with cone 5 B-mix clay from Portland Pottery, and fired to cone 5 at Lexicon Gallery.
We’ve gathered and established how to represent selected stories from the community. We’ve made tiles to illustrate those stories. We’ve made tiles with Gloucester citizens. We’ve bisque-fired and glazed and fired those tiles again. Now it’s time to put the whole thing together.
We start with a material called Wedi Board, which is a lightweight tile backer board, and bolt on angle-iron across the back, so as to later attach the board to the wall with corresponding pieces of angle-iron.
The next step is to decide where everything is going to go — how to arrange the featured tiles on the panel so as to create the greatest impact. This is an early stage of Never Try, Never Win while I was working out the composition. Once featured tiles settle into their places, tiles are adhered using Thin-set, spaces are filled in using smaller tiles, the tiles get denser and denser to bring the images into focus.
Once all tiles are applied, the spaces between them are filled in with grout. I’ve used white grout with colorant — working the grout between all tiles, and then cleaning the remainder off the surface.
Once the entirety of the panel is grouted and the grout has cured, I treat the panel with multiple coats of a penetrating sealer, and finish the edges with copper roofing tape.
I have had the great good fortune to work with the team from Clay Sign Service to design a system for mounting the mosaic panels on the wall at Americold.
Gloucester, Massachusetts
Gloucester, Massachusetts, is located on and covers most of Cape Ann, 31 miles northeast of Boston. I have been a partial resident of Gloucester all my life. Gloucester—infused with America’s history and its own—is surrounded by ocean, and, for the time being, it remains a very authentic place. On the way to nowhere, except by water, Gloucester is preserved from the overwhelming homogenization of our age. Strongly influenced by its Italian and Portuguese residents, Gloucester is a historic fishing town; however, due to the depleting of our limited oceans, there have been increased restrictions on fishing, profoundly impacting the local economy. Gloucester is at risk of being diluted, changed, turned from a vibrant real community to a place like too many others.
To see what Gloucester was like during the last century, check out this video made by the Ford Motor Company in 1946 — Men of Gloucester.
They that go down to the sea in ships