Mosaic is ready for display

Monica Lang's mosaic: Dobbin at the Forge is almost ready to put on the wall at the Westbank charity shop in Starcross.
The materials have mainly been donated or recycled: the tiles, the glass and plastic nuggets, the board it's mounted on, the tile adhesive and the large horseshoe. The bike reflectors were kindly donated from the Exeter Ride-on cycling charity. Cofton Motors supplied plastic from vehicle rear-lights.

Dobbin's forge glows in the dark

The photo shows how Dobbin's forge glows in the dark
The mosaic will be installed in November.

Mosaic and TRAIL exhibit workshops at Starcross Primary School

After the summer half-term, artists from Starcross History will visit Starcross Primary School and work with the children to complete a mosaic which has been designed by Stanley Beck from Year 1. Stanley won the competition to design it. It's a beautiful rainbow and a sun, with the words Welcome to Our School

• The artists will also work with the children to add a tail to this year's exhibit on the Teignmouth Recyled Art in the Landscape sculpture trail which is  Kattanga; the Coathanger Horse. AND they'll create sea from old scaffolding netting and CDs,  and monstrous plastic monsters from beach flotsam; so that Kattanga can gaze at the GALLOPING pollution of the 5 oceans... which are?

• Atlantic Ocean.
• Arctic Ocean.
• Indian Ocean.
• Pacific Ocean.
• Southern Ocean

7 continents and 5 oceans from countries-ofthe-world.com

Some of the flotsam  to make the monsters will be collected at the Teignmouth Beach Clean on Sunday May 27th. Meet at the lighthouse, at 11:30am. The clean will last for an hour. Anyone is very welcome to come along. Please.

Meet at the point lighthouse 11:30am. Sunday May 27th

Here's a photo of Kattanga-in-progress. We've run out of black coathangers..

 

Found some more black coathangers - but not enough yet. Kattanga's repositioned tail is up! Hooray. The children at Starcross school will make it spectacular with loadsa video&cassettetapes.

AGM

At the AGM on Wednesday, March 14th, Monica Lang stepped down as chair. Jane Lee was elected as the new chair. Barbara Rich was re-elected as the treasurer. Monica Lang will continue to maintain this weblog, and also to be the arts/projects manager.
Jane set the date for the next meet of Starcross History; Wednesday, 16th May at 7:30pm in St Paul's Church. The group will examine ways forward with the Villages in Action material collected about Starcross' history.

Joanne Bickel and Alma Harding lead a mosaic workshop. Alma started her mosaic of the Westbank logo; using bottletops as the tessarae. Joanne brought some butterflies cut from wood and showed everyone how to affix broken tiles using waterproof tile grout. The forge mosaic was grouted.
Ideas were discussed for the Starcross History entry to this year's Teignmouth Recycled Art in the Landscape. The entry will include the mosaic of the forge, and a life-size horse, sculptured from scrap plastic. The children from Starcross Primary School will help with the TRAIL project, AND work on designs for another mosaic for the school.

Starcross Butterfly

 Please can anyone help with a description or picture of the Starcross Butterfly?

The endangered butterfly known locally as the Starcross Butterfly thrived in apple orchards. When the orchard in Staplake Road was grubbed up, the Starcross Butterfly wasn't so common.
The Devon Wildlife Trust don't have a record of a butterfly of this name, but the White Admiral is one of the endangered local species. DWT have kindly sent information about the White Admiral.
Limenitis camilla It's black and white on the topside; orange, black and white underneath.

What an admirable subject for a mosaic.

White Admiral.
Limenitis camilla

White Admiral.
Limenitis camilla

 Members' photo gallery. Butterfly Conservation UK

The White Admiral - Butterfly Conservation UK

Sailed Barges

A potential site has been located for a mosaic of a sailed barge bringing limestone from the quarry at Berry Head to the Cockwood lime kilns. Research is ongoing about what the barges looked like. They were probably Thames barges.
HERE'S a record, from the Mersea Museum,  of a barge named Active which sunk off Berry Head on May 29th, 1988.
A copy of  Big Barges (recommended by Ron Green of Mersea Museum) by Hervey Benham and Roger Finch is ordered.

 The real thing is not far away though. A Thames barge, The Vigilant,  is being restored on Topsham Quay by Andy Voysey, who has kindly sent these photographs.

Wednesday, March 14th - Mosaics and Horses

The next meeting of Starcross History has been re-arranged to be on Wednesday, March 14th, 7:30pm in St Paul's Church.

 Alma Harding and Joanne Bickel will lead a workshop to create:

•  mosaics; to mark a Starcross History Trail
• Horses from rubbish; for our 2018 entry in Teignmouth's Trail Recycled Art in the Landscape

They'll show you how easy it is to create outdoor mosaics which will last a few years. There will be mosaics in various stages of production with which you will be invited to help, or you can bring your own design(s) to work on.

There will be some horses made from all sorts of stuff-which-would-be-thrownaway:
Christmas lights that don't work make wacky manes&tails.

Mousedrawn Horse

 
A broken plastic washing basket might get bent to make a saddle.
Plastic stuff  won in Christmas crackers will add colour

Will you start/make a horse/horse's head/something to do with Horse - and bring it along? Any size - but your sculptures will be open to all the elements on Teignmouth seafront for the summer SO they must be secure and will have to be securely anchored down using fence posts with metal drive-in spikes.

T.R.A.I.L. is a protest about wasted resources. That our horse sculptures look out to sea  will speak of the galloping plastic pollution of the 5 oceans.

This meet will also be the agm, so copies of the constitution and the chair's report will be available. Perhaps there might be some volunteers to take on a committee rôle or 3?

DATE AND TIME TO BE RE-ARRANGED Mosaic Mayhem

The next meet of Starcross History will be on

Wednesday 14th February, (which is also Ash Wednesday AND Valentine's Day) at 7:30pm in St Paul's Church.

DATE AND TIME TO BE RE-ARRANGED

There is no charge for membership and there is no charge for admission, but we need to cover expenses, so PLEASE BRING A RAFFLE PRIZE. 

Points on the Starcross History Trail will be marked with mosaics, so this meet will have a mosaic workshop, to get people interested in the project, and to show them how easy it is to make a weatherproof mosaic.
The workshop will be led by Alma Harding and Joanne Bickel. Materials including tiles and bottlecaps will be used on a wood base.

Ideas for the points on the history trail need to be followed up with a site visit, and permission sought to site a relevant mosaic in a prominent place.

If you have your own idea for a Starcross History mosaic, please get in touch so that we can tell you what materials you'll need to bring, and save a table for you. Outdoor mosaics can be on wood bases, on paving slabs or plantpots.

We'll also look at horse sculpture from plastic rubbish. Redundant Christmas lights make great manes and tails!

Our this year's exhibit on the Teignmouth Recycled Art in the Landscape sculpture trail will include this mosaic of a forge. The tiles need grouting, and the wood needs to be waterproofed with yacht varnish.

Starcross History's whole TRAIL exhibit will be titled Horse and we will add as many horse sculptures as we can. The sculptures will be made from plastics that are not usually recycled, and that will end up in landfill. Ideas for sculpting horses from rubbish from the internet: Sayaka Kajita Ganz uses all sorts of found plastic to make incredibly graceful horses

Sayaka Kajita Ganz uses all sorts of found plastic to make incredibly graceful horses

Coathanger Horse 2014 by Miriam Amery-Gale

Miriam Amery-Gale made her marvellous Coathanger Horse, in 2014.


This meet will also be the AGM. Maybe someone else will volunteer to be the chair, treasurer, secretary, projects manager, publicity officer, co-ordinater for schools, or chief researcher? Copies of the constitution will be available, and suggested amendments voted on. The chair will read the report about what Starcross History has achieved since its last AGM, and what its plans are.

TILES WANTED for The Starcross History Mosaics Project

With lots of help from the village, The Starcross History Mosaics Project will create a series of mosaics to celebrate its fascinating history.

The first design being worked on is for the forge.The forge mosaic will have an anvil, horse-shoes, hammer & tongs and a HORSE (of course), set against a background  of the red&orange-glowing coals of the furnace.
The forge used to be called Smiths Forge  The Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies   hold a bundle of documents, dated 1728-1894.

Another current design idea is of Brunel with his iconic cigar and stove-pipe hat, by a red sandstone tower.

The owner of the house where Captain Peacock lived, has kindly agreed to display our mosaic of The Swan of the Exe  - which will be based on this excellent photograph ( kindly forwarded by The Liverpool Archives) of Captain Peacock's folly, The Swan of the Exe, with Mr Dixon, of Dixon's Yard at Exmouth (where the yacht was built)  and Captain Peacock on board

Teignbridge District Council point out that the siting of mosaics might mean getting planning permission, and they have offered the help of their Community Art and Design Adviser.

Anyone could have a go at making a mosaic. But broken tiles can have sharp edges, cutting tiles can result in flying shrapnel, tile adhesive can stick to stuff you don't want it to, so be aware of the Health and Safety aspect of what ought to be a harmless hobby.

The steps to create an outside mosaic could be:
NB wear goggles to protect your eyes, and gloves to protect your hands.  Put your hands inside a pillowcase when you cut tessarae; to prevent pieces flying.

• Find a piece of wood with at least one side unvarnished and unpainted.
• Drill holes where you will fix it to a wall
• (you will leave a space around the fixing holes you have drilled - you tile over the top of the screws after the mosaic is fixed in place)
• Create a design out of simple shapes 
• Draw it onto the unvarnished, unpainted wood
• Collect the tessarae - which need to be small, thin and flat. You could use pebbles, or tiles, or pottery or shells. If you need to cut tessarae, do it inside a pillowcase to prevent pieces flying. 
• Sort the tesserae into colours
• Use WATERPROOF adhesive cement. Polyfilla is ideal. Either butter it on to the tesserae or put it onto the wood - whichever way suits you is best. 
• After it's dried for a couple of days, grout it all with WATERPROOF grout.
• Leave a couple more days.
• Use yacht varnish to make the wood waterproof on the back and the edge of the wood.

NB wear goggles to protect your eyes, and gloves to protect your hands.  Put your hands inside a pillowcase when you cut tessarae; to prevent pieces flying. 

There's lots more advice on the internet, but much of it is around mosaic suppliers. Using unwanted materials such as old/broken tiles and shells is the cheapo way


Please get in touch if you can add to this basic how2, or would help with this project. Do you have any plain coloured tiles? It doesn't matter if they are broken. Any colours, but we need red and orange for now. and silver and gold.
 
Many thanks to Joanne Bickel and Alma for their advice and encouragement.