1-2-3 Mississippi Mosaics at MSP Airport

Installed at the MSP International Airport, Delta Gates C4-6.  Hundreds of thousands of vitreous glass tiles.  Special thanks to crew Austin Flom, Mary Lee Leikas, Michelle Roise, Kathy Thiel, Anni Kandel, Thea Schermerhorn, Bobbi Solien, and Cathi Tiedeman; and to installers Leslie Bentley and Joyce.

"One Missippi"
Lake Itasca Headwaters, MN
9.5' x 11'

"Two Mississippi"
St. Anthony Falls, MN
9.5' x 10.5'

"Three Mississippippi"
St. Paul, MN
9.5' x 10.5'

MMM #3: SIZE MATTERS

All along I've known these were big walls -- approximately 11 wide by 10 tall -- but it never hit me HOW BIG until I put up one of the templates I had printed. Yikes!  That's going to be a lot o' tiles.....

I'm 5'3"  and the full height isn't shown, but you get the idea.  Going to do this wall first, even though it is the 3rd one, because it seemed to be the...  not easiest per se, but the one with large simple areas.  Ha!  Was I ever wrong -- seems to be easier to be complex than simple. 

** These posts are current, but the activities described are from the past 2 months;  just now getting around to blog.

Pre and post grout

This is a quick and dirty posting; I'm using less than perfect pictures taken at different times of day in different lighting conditions.


Both of these panels were driven down to Sioux Falls and installed on the 2nd floor of the Sanford Heart Hospital, between the cath lab and the atrium walkway. The drive home was much more eventful, involving a marathon phone call with one of my children, Ipod running out of charge, high winds, running out of gas, a temperature drop of over 30 degrees, and hitting a bird.

BUT-- the mosaic is done, after months of 16 hour days, thanks to efforts from Gin, Bobbi, Cathi and Liz.

Many mosaic artists working with this kind of tile do not grout, but I like both the visual unity and the structural strength that grout gives a mosaic.

Can you find the ("hidden") heart?