Angels in Mosaic

I'm giving a workshop in the portrait sketch tomorrow at Kennedy Art.
It's always a great day of painting and good craic.
My next one is on the 17th October.

And on Sunday I'm off to Spilimbergo again to see how the team at Travianutto are getting on with the Knock Bascilica mosaic.
Here's how some of the Angels were looking on my last visit.
I know they have been working very hard on this project so there will be a lot more mosaic for me to see.

Progress on the mosaic for the Bascilica at the National Shrine at Knock

I have just returned from another trip to Spilimbergo in northern Italy to see how the work is going on the big mosaic that I have designed for the Bascilica at the National Shrine in the village of Knock, County Mayo. 

The image will show a representation of the Knock apparition of 1879. 

My design is being interpreted in mosaic by the exceptionally talented people at Travisanutto mosaics.

They are used to creating mosaics as large as this one, (It will measure more than 14 metres square) but I'm pretty sure this will be the largest ever mosaic in Ireland.

 Here are a few photos showing the artisans at work.
A sea of smalti. Viewing some of the larger areas that have been completed.

You can just see my painting in the background.

This shows how the little pieces of coloured glass (smalti) and marble combine like pixels on a screen to create an image

 
I can't show too much of the mosaic in progress, but It was such a moving experience for me to see the wonderful work they are doing at Travisanutto that I have to share  a detail of one of the foreground figures.
It amazes me how the artisans (they insist on not being called artists) can create such wonderful effects with combinations of stone and glass.

Progress Report On My Mosaic For The Bascilica in Knock, County Mayo

I spent a good part of last year making a design for what will be a huge mosaic on the wall behind the altar of the newly refurbished Bascilica of Our Lady of Knock.

I took the design over to Travisanutto Mosaics in Spilimbergo, Italy a few months ago and the experts there have been enlaging my design up to the full 14 metre square size.

I was back in Spilimbergo this week to see how the scaling up was going.

In the drawing room at Travisanutto we are starting to get a sense of the scale of the mosaic by looking at the cartoon in sections that show the full width.

Ginnasio was good enough to pose for me when I needed to fix up this character's clasped hands.

Here's a close-up of one of the very first areas of completed mosaic.

Fabrizio and his team (including Giovanni, in the foreground, and Giannasio in the distance) laid out the cartoon at the town gymnasium so we could view the full size image for the first time.

Having the "thumbs up" for the full size cartoon the team at Travisanutto are now ready to start making the mosaic itself. 

Here are some of the smalti (coloured glass pieces sourced in Murano, Venice) to be used in the foreground of our mosaic.
The team at Travisanutto will be working hard to complete the mosaic in time to transport it to Ireland in February next year.