Finishing

The Oak Tree reveals the school within it's trunk. 

Still in progress the Little Fish begins to shine as he leaps up the (wall) waterfall.

More grout required but getting there, the Dandelion Clock.

The day of the opening and some of the 'Victorian' teachers proudly checkout the Oak Tree for their Friday-afternoon hand made butterflies!

The third Honey Bee flies across the Oak Tree heading for the giant Dandelion or is she going for a drink in the fish's pool? (all worker honey bees are female)

Close up of the children's leaves and acorns showing the stained grout effect. 

                             

You Are Here

Working out the lines of Yin & Yang - not there yet!

The final two mosaics are maps and sit on the opposite walls to the more natural scenes. 

I always intended to include a plan of the school, incorporating the various stages of the building's evolution. As I remember, during my time at Glago the building still had the Victorian outside loos, which were interestingly, directly on the site of the new extension!  While considering evolution, the symbolism required the inclusion of 125 years of children in some way and while i wanted to be decorative, the spiraled 'ribbons' of human DNA introduced themselves to me and stayed as the beautiful twisted border of a circle (cycles). Now the main consideration was how to use the pattern of tiles to work the background. The word 'background' brought to mind the energy of creation, the Background Presence and after exploring spirals and flower patterns up popped the Yin & Yang. Perfect. The ups and downs of life's journey once again, those trials and tribulations that make us stronger and build our confidence with encouragement and support. Honey Bee number two was happy to do a 'fly past' in honour of nature and give the children something to count. Lovely.

I've always loved maps that tell me 'You Are Here' and find it amusing to consider that the plan points to a position that I occupied as a school-child, as an adult artist and also within the Yin & Yang journey of life in terms of the image symbolism. This shot taken while we cleaned off the brown paper backing.

This finished and polished up image clearly shows  all the design elements and picks out the large quantity of opalescent tiles that I've utilised throughout all the mosaics, which serve to reflect even the smallest amount of light that comes into the interior space.

The orange outline in the plan represents the original building, the purple~grey the next stage of extensions, and the new build is marked out on dark blue at the top. The children will be able to work out how they use the building, where they go etc from the position of the Hall and the Mosaics in the Undercroft.