The Process

My mosaics start in the field, rockhounding. I choose rocks that I can envision being used in my mosaics, hopefully, really cool, beautiful ones that will add to the mosaics. So it starts with curation. I slice most of the rocks I find or buy. After slicing, I’ll pick one rock, or a collection of pieces from the same sliced and cut. Then I’ll start looking through my collection of thousands of other pieces that fit with it.

After a good start, I will add special pieces, minerals that have chatoyancy, meaning special optical effects, like flashy colors or glow, shine, or sparkle. And I’ll usually include at least one fossil that’s millions or hundreds of millions of years old. Painters have a palette using different color paints.

My palette is composed of Rocks, minerals, crystals, fossils and glass and metals Besides the rocks I find locally and in my travels, I also purchase many rocks including, agates, amber, amethyst, apatite, azurite, crystallized bismuth, chalcopyrite (peacock ore,) chrysocolla, copper, emerald, fluorite, fossils, fulgurite, garnet, gniess, hematite, jade, jasper, kyanite, labradorite, lepidolite, malachite, mica, moonstone, petrified wood, pietersite, quartz, rosy quartz, selenite, slate, smoky quartz, selenite, sodalite, sphalerite, tanzanite, tiger eye, turquoise, vivianite, and cullet glass. On all but the smallest of my mosaics, I include hanging hardware, so they don’t need a frame.