Wednesday, June 4, 2014

closeups of mosaic tiles - RP marxhausen

Double click image to see enlarged.

   "My brother Paul, an engineer for UNL, and his CREW replaced mosaic tiles for my father's last mural at Jones National Bank in Seward, Nebraska. He wrote that father did all the cutting and gluing onsite, as opposed to gluing on flat panels in his studio and assembling panels like a giant puzzle. All the variables that dad had to solve on a curved wall was considerable. My brother has posted photos of segments of that mural. Click on link, it will take you to a page full of links, view as many as you want. My eyes glaze over when I see the scope of his work. But it is quite amazing, and his passion was great to see that project through.
http://reinhold.marxhausen.net/archive/JonesMural/"  Karl Marxhausen



"Yesterday was another time-travel experience for me. When Karl and I were young, it was not unusual for Marx to put us to work filling in areas of mosaic glass or raw split wood on murals he was executing. He'd set us down with jars of the Italian tiles and a tile snipper and a bottle of glue and tell us what he needed done.

So yesterday I was on a ladder with that very same tile nipper in my hands, poking through the bowls of tile that Anne had painstakingly sorted from the few remaining supplies we have, finding as close to the right color for the missing spots on the Jones mural, and snipping them to size as needed.

On a more grandiose level, the thought crossed my mind of workmen doing exactly the same thing centuries and even millennia ago, painstakingly putting the bits of glass into floors and walls across Europe and the Middle east, and here we are today, still at it." Paul Marxhausen