Carrie Reichardt

Today Nick sculptured Phoolan's leg bones in stoneware clay, whilst Eóghan Ebrill (our new technical adviser and master mosaicist) taught me how to prepare her body surface for mosaicing.
Now for the technical bit...over to Eoghan to explain;
"Firstly we brush coated her with an expoxy primer and while still wet we dusted this with a very fine sand aggregate. This was to ensure we got a perfectly even substrate, with a smooth texture like fine grade sandpaper, so that it would provide an optimum key for the adhesion of the tesserae (mosaic pieces) to the body surface. As Phoolan will eventually be exhibited publicly outdoors, she will be subject to the vagaries of the weather plus the attention and tactile exploration by the hands of Art admirers and curious children alike, it is so important that the preparation of the mosaic substructure be as strong as possible. With this solid foundation we can now begin to clad and embellish Phoolan with mosaic and we will keep you informed of each step of the procedure as it unfolds"

And I thought all you had to do is stick a few tiles on!!!