Mosaic

 

When we found the location for opening our violin store in 2008, one of the many things I loved about it was the large windows. They are perfect for setting up displays to be seen from the street and sidewalk, and they provide a lovely view from my bench throughout the day. There is so much window space that I felt we could afford to block some with a Rubik's Cube mosaic if I ever built one.

A cube mosaic is simply using the individual squares of color on the front face of a Rubik's Cube as pixels in a larger image. There are programs available online where you can upload a picture into a pixel-generator based on your cube colors, and it will give you image options complete with a breakdown of a dozen cubes at a time for easy assembly. 

Pattern breakdown on my laptop

 

Assembly in the box-frame

Finished image (design by Aden Weisser)

I'm not a speed-cuber, but I'm fast enough at solving individual cube faces that my mosaic of 480 cubes only takes me a few hours to do. I find it relaxing, and the people in the neighborhood seem to enjoy the changing display.

I had been looking at that space in the window and wanting to put a cube mosaic in it for more than fifteen years before I finally just did it. At first as a young business, that seemed like a ridiculous expense to invest in. Even in bulk, speed cubes (which don't have stickers, and look cleaner for use in an art piece) were going to cost money I didn't feel I could justify spending when there were supplies to buy and rent to pay. Plus I wasn't quite sure how to construct a secure frame for it, and to top it off I generally have a lot going on with little free time to spare.

But my schedule has gotten simpler as my children have grown. The last kid in the house even does most of the cooking, so I'm not saddled with shopping for and making dinner nowadays. Last year it hit me that buying a ton of cubes was never going to be a reasonable sounding expense, and I should just do it. I imagined how stupid I would feel on my deathbed wondering why I never did this thing that in the grand scheme wasn't that big an expense at all.

Because why are we here? What are we doing? Life is short and there's lots to try before we go. One of those things I wanted to try was that mosaic, so why wait?

I started by ordering 240 bulk speed cubes. I experimented with a pattern on the living room floor, and the kids and I decided it was too small. As extravagant as owning 240 cubes sounded, we could make better images by doubling that number. Beyond that seemed too unwieldy for the space and harder to make time to switch out with any frequency. 480 it was.

I ordered a second batch of cubes, accidentally got sticker cubes, sent those back, got new speed cubes, but the colors didn't match the first set, so they let me send back the original batch, and I got a new set of cubes from the same factory batch as the set I kept. So that was a lot. And now I feel silly about having an issue with the slight color difference, because as the cubes have been in the window many colors have faded and they don't match each other now anyway. At some point I will have to probably refresh them with paint.

mismatched

 

I've enjoyed coming up with new designs, usually derived from photographing things inside the shop.

The first one I did was of a scroll I had recently carved. I really like how the mosaic images look from across the street. It's fascinating how our brains fill in necessary details.

 

I tend to change the mosaic on average about once a month, depending on how much time I have. There is an ebb and flow to repair work where sometimes there is a break or everything is drying in clamps for a while, and I can just sit while waiting for deliveries or appointments. It's nice to settle in by the window and solve cubes.

 

I've even done holiday themed images, like putting up a picture of my Cell-O-Lantern, or Peeps.

 

Peeps!

The box/frame is a big piece of thin plywood (I didn't want it to be too heavy) with a wood border just deep enough to hold the cubes. It's resting on a dolly with wheels I can lock, and that can also be tipped into a horizontal position if I ever want to lay out all the cubes as if they are on a table. Originally I planned to put some kind of grippy backing in the box to help secure the cubes, but gravity turned out to be enough. The small lean of the box is sufficient to make the cubes stay in place. The dolly also allows me to rotate the box toward me to work on it, and then easily turn it to face the window when the image is done.

Box construction took up all my floor space

Bonus that the dolly wheels are a fun color!

 

It always looks like more off the board

I'm lucky that I like my job very much, and I won't be someone who regrets having spent so much time at it. If I couldn't make a living at what I do, I would find a job that allowed me to do violin work as a hobby. I don't mind being defined by my particular job, because it sums up a great deal of who I am and strive to be. My work is creative and practical, it's about helping others and creating beauty, and I feel connected to both the past and the future keeping a tradition alive in my own corner of the world.

When people ask why there are Rubik's Cubes in my violin store, the answer is because I like them. The store is me. It reflects what I like and who I am, from the violins to the cubes to the sparkle cello to the pride flags to the Mold-A-Ramas to the Escher floor puzzle to the rocks from Lake Michigan to my dog in the window. There are pictures of my kids, my husband by my side, and now there is also a cube mosaic.

I am many things that make a whole. We all are. Life is a mosaic, and together we form something larger than ourselves. I'm grateful every day that each person who can does their small part to keep our lives running. If we're doing our little piece well, it eases someone's burden and brightens the world a tiny bit more. Sometimes that means simply being who we are authentically, and doing the things we like and not putting them off.

I like that doing something that makes me happy can also bring passersby a little joy. 

Summery Summary

 

This summer has been a lot, and it went by too fast. Time to jot some of it down before it all slips away!

On the travel end of things, it's been a simpler year. No mandolin adventures abroad, no camping trips or visits out west. We managed a trip to our cottage in Michigan for a few days where the highlight was that we finally had both the money and sense to arrange for someone to deep clean it before we got there. We don't have enough time when we visit to both clean it and relax, and the point of going is to relax, so the cleaning was overdue. The maid was wonderful, and even found a new arrangement for the twin size beds upstairs that at first we balked at because it was new (and at the cottage we seldom strive for "new") but after a few moments had to concede was much better.

Cookouts and walks and board games. I think often about how my grandmother used to spend a full month at the cottage every year, and how nice it would be to settle in there like that. Someday. When I'm not as needed to do so many school repairs over summer.

 

 

 

We also had someone come in and update all the electrical stuff, which was another thing that was overdue. Now we can do exciting things like use the microwave for more than 30 seconds at a time without tripping the breaker.

Unfortunately, we may need to budget for a new roof at the cottage as the next big thing. I really don't want to pay for another roof. We had to do that on our first house, the garage for that house, our current house, the violin store building, and my husband's childhood home in Oregon before we could sell it this summer. That's too many roofs! Oh, and selling a house two time zones away? Not fun. But after two years it was time and I'm glad someone will get to enjoy living in that nice little neighborhood.

The other travel we did this summer was all related to the Celebrating Women Luthier's exhibit. I had the two instruments I'd made for two of my kids on display, along the scroll I carved that will go on the third soon. It was a marvelous exhibit that started at Potter Violins in the Washington DC area, and then moved on to Reuning and Son in NYC (down the street from Carnegie Hall), a surprise stop at the Reuning and Son shop in Boston, and finally at Sapp Violins in the Chicago area.

We did a road trip to NYC (with fun stops to stay with family in Ohio each direction), and that was amazing. I don't normally get to include my family in my luthier-world events, but at Reuning and Son I was part of a panel discussion where my mom, husband, kids, brother, and sister in law all got to attend. I loved that. My brother and his wife arranged for us to stay in their next door neighbor's place (which was vacant at just the right time) in Washington Heights, which is always a joy. Prettiest part of Manhattan in my opinion, and we enjoyed walks to Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters. We ate well mostly because we ate in most nights and my sister in law is an incredible cook. We also ate out at a Turkish restaurant one night that we could bring the dogs to. And not a typical stop on most visitors' trips to NYC, but I was really pleased to get to see my brother's new office at the Child Mind Institute.

In no particular order, here are some New York pictures:

View of the Hudson River on our walk to the Cloisters.

 Kids at the obligatory visit to the Nintendo Store, and at the Cloisters.

 

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 Dog cousins!

Homemade lime cheesecake with fresh berries at the end of a delicious feast our final night.

 

Insanely intricate miniature carvings on display at the Cloisters. (I own a lot of tools, and I have no idea how I would approach trying to carve something like this.)

 

Aden on the balcony of the room she stayed in.

 

Subway Domino!

  

My brother's apartment is both the doors on the left, and the place we stayed is the door on the right. Interestingly, those two side by side apartments are technically in different buildings. We never take it for granted that we have such a lovely place to stay when we are in New York. Also, Pepper!

 

Outside the new digs for the Child Mind Institute! They have some excellent art inside. Also, Domino the subway dog in a bag!

 

Some of my family and friends at Reuning and Son for my panel talk. Such a pretty space!

Panel selfie!

It worked out very well for me that I crossed paths with a friend heading to DC in time to deliver my instruments to the beginning of the Celebrating Women Luthiers exhibit, and that the last stop was in Batavia IL where I could not only attend the opening, but pick my instruments up at the end of the show. The event at Sapp Violins was incredibly nice. I got to drive in with a fellow luthier, and meet my other brother there and show him around. We arrived early and stayed late and enjoyed every minute of it. Here's even a shot of someone playing one of my instruments, which is always a treat.

Speaking of lutherie... I've been doing my best to make progress on the two violins and viola I've been working on forever. For a plethora of reasons, I'm behind schedule, but my current goal is to maybe have something done in time to enter in this fall's Violin Society of America competition. We'll see.

 

 

The main impediment to my work lately has been pain. 

My right knee started to hurt back in February, and by St Patrick's Day, I ended up in urgent care because I couldn't walk. After x-rays and ultrasounds I still can't tell you what's wrong with it, but they sent me to PT before opting for anything invasive. PT helped, although I honestly am never sure if the main factor for healing is simply time. About a month ago the physical therapist gave my right knee a passing grade and let me go. Now the left knee is failing in the same way. I'm doing the exercises I learned in PT, but it's hard. Some nights the pain keeps me awake. Moving in any way is difficult. You don't realize how much you twist and shift your legs in bed until it hurts every time you do it. 

Chronic pain is demoralizing. It lures your focus from everything you'd rather be doing, and it's boring.

And sitting on any chair where my knees are pitched too high is excruciating. I've been avoiding mandolin rehearsals this summer, partly because after ten minutes in a folding chair my knee feels like it's screaming at me. I may have to bring some kind of cushion when orchestra starts up soon or I don't think I'll get through it.

I have another appointment with the sports doctor soon, and I hope she can help. (Considering how much I have always detested running, the idea that my injury is connected in any way to something like "sports" is very funny to me.) I miss being able to walk without having to think about it.

Fun things this summer!

My kids have really upped their game with Mother's Day breakfast in bed.

I started a little Domino painting on our garage, but I can't finish it until my knees are good enough to get that low again. I don't think the dog approves.

The goofiest non-violin project in my shop is gluing up the oddest snow globe I've ever seen. One of my kids bought it for her little sister last year, and it's inexplicably a seagull standing next to a littler seagull in a snow globe. So I need to put that back together at some point.

Between graduation requirements and participation in the National Honor Society, Quinn needs lots of volunteer hours. We did some of that this summer by signing up every few weeks to make bag lunches for an organization called Street Angels that works with homeless people in our area. She's gotten really good at shopping for, and assembling, 50 lunches at a time.

I think my favorite summer project has been making a cube mosaic display for my violin shop. I have wanted to do that since we opened in 2008, and I finally decided I needed to make it happen rather than think about it. It took me a while to build the box, and then find the right dolly to prop it up, but I'm happy with the result. Although there was a prolonged issue with getting my bulk cubes. I ordered 240 stickerless speed cubes to start, but after playing with some designs, decided it would be worth it to double the number of them to make a more detailed display. I ordered another 240 cubes, but through a mix up, I got sticker cubes. I returned those then had to wait for the stickerless ones to be back in stock. When those arrived, they didn't match the original cubes! I wound up exchanging the original box of cubes for more cubes that would match the newer ones. So that was more complicated and drawn out than I imagined it would be.

Mismatched cubes

480 cubes is a lot of cubes

 

In the end it all worked out, and I love the display. We run photos through a grid generator online that breaks the picture down into pixels a dozen cubes at a time, then I arranged the cube faces and Quinn lines them all up in the box. We've done two pictures so far, and plan to change it up again soon.

The only concert I played this summer was for Juneteenth with the Black Diaspora Symphony Orchestra. It was a powerful program that included pieces I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to play. The one I can't stop thinking about is

Dayvin Hallmon conducting rehearsal

Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson. It's one of those things that is hard to recommend in a way, because it's devastating. But also very beautiful. It was emotional to play and kind of wrecked me a bit more each time we played it. This is an important composition that deserves to be much better known. 

I felt the same way about the music featured in the NYC concert of women composers at the lutherie exhibit. Some of the best music out there remains obscure because it isn't in the standard repertoire. We need to put more music by underrepresented groups front and center for all our benefit.

It's hard to stir the people in our house out of our own quiet projects, but we did go see a drone show downtown. We watched it near the North Point Water Tower. I really liked something akin to a fireworks show without the noise. (Domino does better with fireworks explosions in our neighborhood than Chipper did, but it still bothers her.)

There were several things we expected to do this summer that we either didn't get to or didn't finish, but I was proud of Aden for doing some work with the 3D printer. She made a small dog for a friend that was only a few inches tall, and really cute. One day she will make us a Domino design we can print out. Mona has continued to crank out more and more amazing plushies for her Etsy shop. (Check out the butter cats and the cheese mice!)

The main thing I'm annoyed not to have gotten to by now is my novel. I hired a lovely editor this year to give me notes, and I finally have a direction in mind for when I edit it. I just need actual time to sit down and do it. 

Time has been hard to come by this summer, but thankfully at work my assistant came back again and helped me get dozens of cellos fixed for the school system over the past couple of months. Cello work is particularly hard for me when it hurts to stand. So work has been extra busy, but thanks to my assistant, it didn't kill me.

We were hoping to organize a trip to Six Flags for Quinn and her friends before summer was up, but that required planning on the part of the kids involved, so that was likely doomed from the start. (This generation is impressive in many ways, but planning things is not one of their strong suits.) 

I can't believe school starts next week. Although I appreciate the abandonment of the mid-August calendar this year which got Quinn a longer summer than usual. She's a senior. My last kid in K-12! How did it go by so quickly?

Rufus King High School

 

I'm glad Aden was home this summer. I'm glad Mona is nearby. I'm assuming once Quinn decides on a college that she'll be home next summer before we deliver her to some new campus. But there is no way to know if we'll have another whole summer like this one with all five of us in the same place able to spend time with one another on a daily basis if we wish. I hope so. But I'm not counting on it.

Here's to diving into fall! I'm excited to see what awaits.