My friend, Kay K, had a gallery reception yesterday for her show, Piece by Piece Mosaics, at the Old Town Gallery on Main St. in Tustin. I met a couple of friends there and spent a lovely afternoon perusing her colorful work, listening to sweet harp music and catching up with Anneliese and Terry.
This gallery space is so cool~exposed brick, high ceilings, generous office/studio space in the back. And pretty soon, it will be vacant :-( The owners are moving their business closer to home... 
Julio Montero entertaining the crowd. Harp music is so soothing and classy!
Kay K started her glassmaking journey creating big, ruffly beads, which you can see as the embellishment on these shoes (more later...)
Another example of mosaics and beads (yup, I met Kay K at the Bead Society!). The leaf and stem are embellished with seed beads.
What you may not realize and what I certainly didn't think about, is that each glass piece is hand cut, ground and fired--you don't pick up this stuff off the rack in Michaels! The examples here are the round green pieces and the dark leaves.
And closer still... Can you see the big ruffly beads and a bunch of smaller, round beads? They gave this piece amazing dimension and texture.
This humongous piece is a work in progress that's going to be auctioned for the local charity, All the Arts for All the Kids, in Fullerton. Friends of Kay K, including Terry, are working on the glass pieces, following Kay K's design, while she's doing other glass work and affixing the pieces to the base. The glass pieces for the round designs and longer leaves are glued on netting and affixed as one piece to the base. The other glass is all done separately, piece by piece, and as the design is filled in, the pieces will have to be custom cut to fit in the remaining spaces. You can see especially at the top where glass still needs to be added. Many hands and hearts are participating in this challenge and I'm hoping to see it when it's finished.
Kay K, the woman herself! One of the really cool things she does, which has taken her around the world, is costume building and repair on cruise ships. Doesn't that sound like a blast?! If only I could sew...
And I've saved the best work for last. Ta da!
This is called Breathless. My pictures do not do it justice. Another artist friend of hers did the base, which is exquisite, and naturally, she did the skull.
Again, she's using beads and jewelry to their full advantage! There's only one tooth that's real and I didn't get a photo of that. It's on the far side and it's gold!
The funny thing is, I didn't get one picture of her fish, which was the logo of her show. There were two walls of fish and when I got home, I realized I didn't have any record of those. Duh!!
If you're in the area and want to see Piece by Piece Mosaics (including the fish), here's the website for directions: http://www.otgallery.com/index.html , although Kay K's exhibit isn't on the site yet... And here's the link for the charity event: http://www.alltheartsforallthekids.org/events/index.html
And here's Kay K's own website (yes, you can see the fish here...): http://kaykrobinson.com/Mosaics_by_Kay_K_Robinson/Home.html
Do What You Love!
