I am so excited to start my blog by announcing a fantastic new mosaic project I will be working on for Ca'Momi Enoteca's new Osteria on First Street in Downtown Napa! The mosaic will cover their beautiful, brand new Acunto pizza oven, shipped all the way from Napoli, and now stands guard at the restaurant. Installing this behemoth was no easy feat, and apparently in the process at least one forklift was almost tipped over!
Ca'Momi's Pizza Oven, before mosaic begins
As they continue to remodel the restaurant, the place is a construction zone. A lot of my work will be done off site and installed later using the 'indirect' method: laying the tiles face down on clear sheets of contact paper, delivering the sheets to the site and then installing them with thin set in sections. It's a more painstaking process than the usual 'direct' method, but it's much easier when there are difficult areas to reach and will also help keep the work clean.
octopus photo on the wall at Morimoto
The concept for the mosaic is to join water and fire in the form of an octopus, a favorite animal of Ca'Momi owner, Valentina Migotto. I worked with artist Jayashri Triolo, whose beautiful paintings will adorn the osteria walls, to finalize the design. We drew her design directly on the oven with charcoal so Valentina and their wonderful designer, Catherine Enny, could envision the finished piece.
Jayashri drawing the octopus design directly onto the oven with charcoal
Now that we have a design in place, I will begin the tiling process in my Dad's workshop with technical support from my long-time friend, David Lewis. David has completed several large scale mosaic projects and just having him in the room makes me feel better!
The restaurant is set to open in October, so my goal is to complete the mosaic by mid-Sept. I plan to document the process here, so check back soon!
In the meantime, here's a recent article about the project from our local paper.