Hello good peoples of the internet! I would like to introduce you all to a wonderful mosaic artist, a fabulous pie baker, and an all around awesome human being- and they all exist in the person that is Lynn Adamo of Hillsboro, Oregon.

Lynn enjoying her pie and ice cream

It’s hard to believe, but Lynn is all that and more.

She recently won a commission from the City of Astoria to do a 10 foot diameter mosaic to be placed in a new park in the heart of Astoria.
The premise of the park is to honor the immigrants who helped build our great Northwest as well as honor a bit of the natural history of Astoria to boot.
The sturgeons depicted in Lynn’s mosaic are representing the fish canning industry that helped make Astoria prosperous.

Mexican smalti “tortillas” (thick, richly colored slabs of glass) were created specifically for this project and are being laid by many hands under the direction of Lynn.
She has created a veritable hive (or swarm?!) of worker bees from which to draw on when the projects get large, and/or the time window for completion is short.

Janie prepping smalti “B” cuts for installation

I am lucky enough to be one of the happy drones working on this gorgeous endevour.

I first went up to Hillsboro (home of Intel) around the 3rd or 4th week into the project. When I arrived things were well underway with one fish completed and another begun.

I  worked with Sandy Arbogast, Jan, and Scott over three full days-and we made some respectable progress, finishing the second sturgeon

 and starting the third.

The meals were fantastic during my first visit too. Bob grilled us a fabulous flank steak one night and some delicious pork the next. Served with his home-brewed beer- what could be better!

And as if that weren’t enough- Lynn topped it off with one of her amazing berry pies with berries fresh from their own yard.

I was absolutely spoiled. And I loved every minute of it.

Mosaics are time intensive- and even with the 5 of us working we weren’t able to finish the last fish before I made my way back down the trail to Talent.

Luckily she had some more great workers with her the next week-Richard Davis and Jennifer Kuhns. Both experienced mosaic artists in their own rights, they whipped through the last of the fish and moved onto the water before their three days were up.

In addition, Richard whipped up some fabulous gourmet meals using his culinary background as a chef. The photos I saw on Lynn’s blog looked good enough to eat!

Now I am geared up for my next mosaic session with Lynn. It’s round two and I’m determined to just “knock it out of the park”-as Lynn might say. You who know her know she is a HUGE baseball fan. It warms my heart just thinking about her checking the scores throughout the days-keeping tabs on her Giants on the laptop as she toils away 🙂