Mirror Mosaic Gecko

Full disclosure, I didn’t intend this project to be an Instructable. So there’s going to be a lot of writing about the project and only a few photos. I wrote a three part essay about my experience and much of what follows is excerpted from the first of those essays. I decorated the gecko with mirror chips as part of a fundraiser for a Women’s Health Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. It was one of 50 such sculptures decorated by local jury-selected artists… and part of a nation wide celebration of whimsical art in public places that took part in many major cities.

From start to finish, it took me about two months to complete as I could only work a few hours each day and only on those days when I wasn’t working on a locally filmed TV pilot. Thankfully, the show wrapped production a couple of weeks into my work on the gecko, and I could put in more time. I also have chronic back pain from a work injury, which additionally limited the hours I could spend bent over the sculpture. 

All of my time was volunteered and all the materials were donated.

By the time I finished, I estimate I had hand cut over 10,000 pieces of mirror, and while I never counted the number of pieces on the entire gecko, the head alone contained over 1,000. The largest piece on the gecko measured 1-1/2” x 2-1/2” was the first piece I cut and is located on the center of the spine near the head. The smallest pieces measured 1/8” x 1/8” and are between the toes.

When I entered the juried completion to be one of the selected artisans, I submitted three ideas for the decoration of a gecko, to cover one with gold leaf, to faux paint one to “vanish” into it’s surrounding, and to cover one with mirror mosaics. 

About a month after my submission, I received a letter from “Geckos in Paradise” as the fundraising project was entitled. The letter informed me that I was to be one of the artisans who would decorate one of the large geckos that would be put on public display. The selection jury had chosen my submission of the mirrored gecko.

I was both thrilled and panicked. Although I would have several months to produce my gecko, when would I find the time? I decided to cease worrying and depend on one of the tenets of my life: “Start at the beginning, work through the middle until you get to the end”.

The beginning was to pick up the sculpture foundation, bring it home, and then assess the situation. Having photographs and written descriptions of the gecko was all fine and good, but having the genuine item in hand would put reality in its place.

While waiting for the gecko form, I had not been idle. I needed to source sheets of mirror mosaics to apply to the fiberglass form. I searched for several weeks in my spare time, scouring the internet. This is when I discovered they no longer existed… at least they weren’t available, which was pretty much the same thing. This was shocking! Unbelievable! They were available back in the 60s and 70s! 

But then so were Nehru jackets.

…and Jarts.

I then decided I would buy loose mirror chips. An excellent fall-back plan… until I found out how much they cost. I could not afford the hundreds or perhaps the thousands of dollars it would cost to cover the gecko. I also couldn’t fathom the amount of work it would take to glue tiny individual mirror tiles on a five-foot-long gecko form. It would be or I would end up being… insane.

Little did I know.

Then I received the fiberglass gecko form.

When I picked it up, I was all smiles and told the folks at the fiberglass shop how wonderful the form was and how I looked forward to working on the project, blah, blah, blah… all the while thinking, “Ohno,Ohno,Ohno!”

The thing was HUGE… and it was all curves. I know I said it was five feet long, but it was an immense five feet long. It was more detailed than I expected… well, not so much detailed , but I mean it had four feet… and each foot had four toes… and the whole thing was really really curvy. What were they thinking? 

Hell, what had I been thinking?

I was in for it and I knew it.

So to work.

I didn’t have a space in my house big enough to work on the thing, which I had known from the beginning, so I had set up a workspace under a tarp tent in my backyard. I hoped it wouldn’t get too hot back there but as it was Hawai’i, there was a pretty good chance the temperatures would be moderate and the trade winds would keep it pleasant throughout the project. I had put a couple of sawhorses under a sheet of 3/4” plywood as a work table and used a 2-step ladder as a stool. I dragged the gecko form out of my van and placed it on the “table” on top of a furniture pad so it wouldn’t slip about. Then I sat… sat and studied the form and thought… and thought… and thought… and tried not to despair.

After all that thinking, I fell back on that phrase that I’ve been repeating. I just had to start. First I needed to find a source for inexpensive mirror glass. I had checked some of the inexpensive local retail stores and the only things I found were long mirrors that are usually attached to closet doors. Then I discovered they had some sort of plastic safety material bonded to the glass which made them unusable because I wouldn’t be able to cut them. Oh yeah, I had realized that I would have to cut every piece of mirror to cover this immense sculpture by hand. I would also have to glue each piece by hand as well

Yay… lucky me.

I then searched local hardware stores and finally found a source or mirror squares… one that people used to glue to some of the walls of their house to kind of gussy up the place (for an agreed understanding of the term “gussy”) in bygone days judging by the condition of the packaging… probably also around the time of Nehru jackets. The mirror tiles were 12” square, came in packs of six, and were reasonably priced. I bought a dozen packs… all they had on the shelf. There was always the chance that they might sell out to customers who had a sudden urge to do some retro decorating or had raging cocaine habits, and in that case I might not be able to find any additional tiles should I need more. I figured the twelve packs of six tiles would be more than I would need and I could return what was left over. No fool me!

I was also looking at construction adhesives for gluing the mirror pieces to fiberglass when I noticed there was a special type meant for mirrors. Something I didn’t know was that any adhesive that wasn’t formulated for the express purpose of gluing the mirrors would attack the backing. Huh… I learned something new… and here I thought I knew everything. I bought about eight caulking-gun-sized tubes of the stuff. 

As I was driving home, I reviewed the things I had just purchased at the hardware store, “mirrors, adhesive, nitrile gloves, mineral spirits, some Q-tips, mosquito coils (usually they don’t bother with me but just in case), and a small container of kerosene. Kerosene? Why the hell did I… oh fer…” 

I made a U-turn and headed back to the store.

The kerosene is a recommended lubricant for a glass cutter… a tool I figured was going to be fairly important in the process of making big mirrors into little mirrors. I know I owned a glass cutter. It had been my father’s. I remember using it as a kid. That meant it had to be you-gotta-be-kidding years old, and while it probably could still cut the odd piece of glass here and there, it was more of a legacy artifact than a tool. I decided I had better get a new one… so back I went.

Arriving home, I went into the backyard, anxious to start. When I submitted my suggestion for the project, I estimated that I would be able to completely cover the gecko form in a few days.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I gamely set out all my supplies and tools and started cutting pieces of glass in randomly sized vaguely rectangular shapes. I think it was when I went to affix that large first piece on the “spine” of the gecko that I realized that there wasn’t a flat spot on the entire form and that glass doesn’t bend. The pieces would have to be smaller… much smaller. I worked for four or five hours until my chronic back pain told me to stop. Here is the result of my first day’s efforts.

On the following weekends, I fell into a rhythm with the project. I would cut a bunch of pieces of varying sizes, then I would look at the next place that needed a piece, select one that would fit, squeeze a bit of adhesive onto its back from the caulking gun, and press it into place. After installing several pieces, I would clean up any adhesive that had squeezed out from underneath the pieces with a bit of toilet tissue dipped in mineral spirits. Every so often I would clean my gloves with mineral spirits as well.

I had selected the best an most expensive mirror adhesive that I could find. There were a couple of what I considered “off” brands that were much less expensive, but I stayed away from them. It has been my experience when using low-priced caulks that often material will dribble out of the tube’s nozzle even if I have backed off the caulking gun plunger. I think this is because there is an air pocket somewhere in the caulk tube. When the gun plunger is depressed and the caulk is forced out of the tube, these air pockets become pressurized and remain so after the plunger force is relieved, The pressurized air pockets continue to force the caulk material out of the nozzle. This phenomenon will continue thought the use of the tube until the air pocket reaches the nozzle at which point there is a noticeable spurt of air, after which the dribble of caulk after the plunger is retracted ceases.

Knowing that I was going to be dispensing a lot of minute amounts of adhesive, I ignored the $2.99 models as I already had several of those and knew they would simply make a mess of my workspace while being a general pain to use. I purchased a top of the line caulking gun. It had a smooth rod as opposed to the saw-toothed types the cheaper models had. It also had a quick rod release lever that worked a charm. It was crucial that when I relieved the plunger pressure, the flow of adhesive should stop. It also featured a nozzle cutter and a spine for piercing the caulk retention membrane inside the tube. I wanted a precise opening in the nozzle so I used a razor knife instead of the attached spine.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Visually, I divided the gecko into “sections”… the torso, the head, the eyes, the legs, the feet, and so on. I approached each section in the same fashion. I would cut and adhere mosaics down visual centerline and the work outward. The eyes were a different matter , being essentially circular. The process, although simple, went on, and on, and on, and on.

One of the things I have noticed in my working life is that “Jobs will expand to fill the time allotted”. I generally do not partake in this phenomenon, but this undertaking looked like it going to doom me to do so.

I worked on the gecko about every other day and only for a few hours… the best I could manage. The temperature outside went over 90°, making the work unpleasant. I usually focused on the amount of gecko I had to cover rather than what I had finished. It was sweaty, repetitive, discouraging work.

Sometimes, I would take pictures of the progress, but not often.

After about five weeks into it, I gotta admit I was pretty sick of working on the thing. Progress was slow but at least it was tedious and grueling. I didn’t realize how tedious it could be until I got to the second foot… the one on the left side where the tail curled around it. Covering between the toes seemed insurmountable, but it became a matter of honor. It took me almost two days of intensive work to complete that damn foot. For example, I placed the smallest pieces of mirror in the entire project (1/8”x1/8”) between the toes using tweezers and a wooden skewer. 

By this time, I wished I could have chucked the entire project into the trash. I knew I wouldn’t but one can dream.

It took me another five weeks to complete the tiling. I must admit I was relieved… and proud of the result. But I wasn’t done yet. It was time to grout the beast. I had done tile work several times during house restorations, so I was familiar with the process, and using a sponge and a rubber edged squeegee, I slathered half of the gecko with grout. The plan was to wipe the excess grout off using a clean sponge and coarse cloth, like burlap.

Did I mention how hot it was outside?

By the time I finished applying grout and reached for my clean sponge and burlap, the area where I had started the grout had pretty much hardened. As I rubbed furiously, my heart sank. Seems I had given my gecko a thin but incredibly hard coat of concrete. I didn’t know how to fix it. So basically, I was screwed. Fortunately, I had a friend, Dave, who had installed ceramic tile professionally so I called him and explained the situation. After Dave stopped laughing, he told me that I could clean the excess grout off with muriatic acid, but that it would be a good idea to hurry and do it before the grout had cured.

Off to the hardware store and back with the acid in under half an hour. The stuff worked a charm. Dave surely saved my butt that day.

After I cleaned up the excess grout, the Gecko, (now with its clothes on) and I, were finished.

Oh, but wait.

I still needed to clean all the mirror bits as they were cloudy with a grout haze. So I got out the Windex and a roll of paper towels and started in on finding out why that wasn’t going to work. 

Why should anything about this gecko project be easy?

The problem was that because the gecko form was all curves and I had attached flat pieces of mirror to it, each piece of mirror slightly poked up each of its four corners… little sharp corners that ripped paper towels to shreds and snagged any type of cloth I tried to use.

Sigh. 

I supposed this meant I would have to clean every tiny piece of mirror individually.

Arghh… there had to be an easier way.

As I was attempting this Herculean cleaning task with a cloth. I thought about something that might work. It occurred to me that I faced a similar problem when I did photography and developed film. Not the pointy bits but the getting rid of the water spots and haze on negatives after developing film. I drove to a local grocery store and bought a small bottle of Jet-Dry, the stuff one puts in their dishwasher to prevent water spots. I mixed up a solution of the stuff and put it in a spray bottle.

Returning to the gecko of despair, I first sprayed it with glass cleaner and scrubbed it with a paintbrush, rinsed it with water, and then sprayed it liberally with the Jet-Dry solution. It worked.

Voila! The Gecko was finally finished.

Here it is an display at the Opening Gala.