Aerial View of Sundial

Here is the bird's eye view of the sundial:
And the sundial in the Outdoor Classroom...

The whole sundial from above:

This is how I took the pictures...Big truck courtesy of the BVSD who lent us the truck and the operator for an hour in the morning. It's pretty fun to be way up high above the grounds of the Outdoor Classroom, hanging out in a little basket.

More beautiful pictures from professional photographer Kirsten Boyer coming soon.

Amanda's Beautiful feet

Amanda helped work on the sundial on a very hot day. Bare feet in summer: yay!

Facts about the Sundial

Who made the tiles?
Many of the tiles were made by the students of High Peaks and BCSIS Elementary, in Spring 2010. Every student from every class hand-panited a 6" slab of wet clay with underglaze. The tiles werecut into 1-2" tiles, fired, glazed again with a clear glossy glaze, and fired a second time. Robyn and Rita and many parent volunteers aided in the process.
Most of the other tiles were donated by ReSource Yard. I went once or twice a week to cull through their tiles and found colorful tiles and granite. Most of these tiles had to be cut into smaller shapes by a wet saw.
A few of the beautiful glass tiles were donated by Home Depot.

How big is it?
The sundial is an 18 foot diameter circle. That means it is (9*9)83.14=254.34 square feet.
The original design was for the sundial to be a 14 foot diameter circle (7*7)*3.14=153.86 squre feet. When I decided to make it bigger, I also needed a LOT more tiles (254.34-153.86=100.48 square feet. Wow! The kids created enough tiles for a 14 diameter circle, but had to make up the difference with manufactured tiles and granite from ReSource, plus some glass tiles from Home Depot.

Who paid for it?
The sundial as well as the whole Aurora 7 Outdoor Classroom was paiod for by grants from GOCO (Great Outdoors Colorado), Lowe's, Home Depot, Boulder Arts Commission, plus generous in-kind donations from ReSource and Rocky Mountain Institute. The art teachers of High Peaks (Jessica Bernstein) and BCSIS (Jan May) donated the use of their rooms, slab roller, and kiln. Jessica Klauzer-Zimmerman, Rita Vali and Cindy Alaimo donated the use of their kilns to fire tiles.
Who worked on it?
Hundreds of volunteers! You know who you are, I wish I could thank everyone!

How many hours did you (Robyn) work on the Sundial?
Robyn's Hours: Design 55, Meetings 15, Consulting 10, Tile Making with kids 120, Firing Tiles 20, Moving tiles 10, Cutting tiles 50, Shopping at ReSource 25, Shopping at Home Depot 10, Making more tiles 25, Layout/Mosaicing 250, Grouting & sealing 25, Driving to & from site 45,Photographing 10, Emailing etc 20, Blogging 40, TOTAL 760 hours

Did you get paid?
Yes, I got paid an honorarium of $1000. (That works out to about $1.30 an hour.)

How many hours did other people work?
I would guess there was about 1 hour of other volunteers' work for every hour of my work. (760 hours) That would bring the total number of volunteer hours to 1520. This does not include the hours of the company men who poured the concrete.

The side is kind of ugly--aren't you going to tile that?
Yes, we will tile it eventually. Maybe we will paint it for this year.

Tile Photo Close-ups

Bugs eye view of Sundial

Rosa and Vanadis check their shadows on the sundial...(10:30 am!) Rosa and her family will be re-locating and saying good-bye to the BCSIS community for a while.

The Mosaic is Done!

Here is the second-to-last step of the Mosaic process; sealing the grout. Sealing the grout will help it to be impervious to water. What is the last step in the process? Celebrating, of course!

Friends Help on the Sundial

Friends are really important! This is a tile that Rita made.

There were so so many friends who helped work on the Mosaic Sundial.









Here's Catherine--a ceramic artist and Naropa student who showed up to help for a few days.

And Walter happened to ride his bike by the mosaic one morning--stopped to watch, and ended up helping wonderfully for four days!

Cynthia has been keeping an eye on the mosaic all summer, encouraging the workers and sending out reminder e-mails. Her daughters (BCSIS graduates) both helped one day, too.

Work Days-- on July 18-22

The week of July 18-22 is going to be the big crunch for the Mosaic sundial. I really didn't think I would be working on this all summer! I will be working on the sundial Monday through Wednesday from 9am-2pm and Thursday and Friday 9am-4pm (weather permitting).

When I am there, you will see my car (2002 Honday Civic) or truck (little blue Toyota with a worn paint job) parked on the street near the sundial every day.

Please come and help!
I especially need help on Thursday and Friday, as we will be grouting. No experience necessary.
Wear clothes you can get dirty ---and bring water, hat, sunscreen and snacks.
Bring gloves if you have them.

If you can't help. just stop by and say hi! Suzanne Schmidt brought by cold drinks for workers one day--that is always welcome.

If you bring a marguerita I won't tell.

New Tiles Being Made for the Sundial

We have run out of hand painted tiles for the sundial so Rita Vali has generously offered to fire some more tiles for the sundial.

Here are some of the new tiles, bisque-fired and glazed and waiting to go into Rita's kiln.

Rita's kiln!

...And the pieces loaded into the bottom

Wet Sundial

As you walk by the mosaic sundial site this weekend, you might see this:


What is this ? Does it look like I am attempting a Cristo-style installation of wrapping the sundial? No, actually, it is wrapped up with a weighted-down tarp to keep the sundial dry.





There has been an inch or more of water on the sundial every morning. We have not been having lots of precipitation: it seems that the sundial is in the rain shadow of the powerful sprinklers that are used to water the bluegrass. The lawn that had been damaged by the construction of the Outdoor Classroom has been re-seeded, and the baby grass seedlings need to be watered twice a day. Unfortunately, the Sundial also gets watered heavily twice a day.


Why does that matter? Well, we are affixing tiles to the cement base with a thin-set morter that needs to dry for at least 24 hours before it gets wet again.







The tarps that were lightly covering the sundial were not weighted down enough, and the jet of water from the sprinkler found a way under the tarps and soaked the tiles. The tiles are now popping off randomly, and I am concerned that the tiles we set on will not be secure.












In a week or two I hoped to grout and seal the entire sundial. Obviously this is impossible if it gets soaked daily.

So, until we can change something about the direction or frequency of the sprinklers, the mosaic sundial will NOT be available for viewing--except when we daily unwrap it (a process which takes at least a half an hour of hard work).

Sundial Tiling is Cruising Along

As you can see, we have made great progress on the tiling of the sundial.

The end is in sight!

We still can use help, though, and love to have people of all ages stop by and help out.

All you volunteers: I cannot thank you enough!

You have helped greatly with the tiling, and even more with keeping the energy happy and moving forward. Rah RahRah! I LOVE having the help fo so many people--parents and school kids, neighbors and friends have all helped. It has truely been a community project.

I will be at the site most weekdays from about 9am to 12 noon, sometimes later.
I am a fair weather mosaic artist, though, and will probably not show up on rainy days!

Detail from seven o'clock.

new Photos of sundial

Work on Sundial resumes June 8

The mosaic isn't done yet, but I will be out of town for a few days, so the work is pausing. The work on the sundial will resume Wednesday June 8. I sure enjoyed working with many different people and getting to know them. Helpers include parents and kids from High Peaks and BCSIS, as well as some friends and neighbors who stopped by to visit and ended up helping out. Photos soon!

Sun Tiles Cemented onto Sundial

After weeks of rain, the sun is shining and the sundial is operational! WooHoo! The words of instructions, along with the numbers and the months have been affixed to the cement slab. If the sun shines, the sundial tells time. The brilliant sun that is a large part of the mosaic design is also set in morter on the sundial. Visitors and volunteers are welcome to come and visit and try their hand at creating a part of a mosaic. (Friday May 27-Sunday May 29, 9am-3pm) It's starting to look beautiful within the chaos. Kind of like how we parents feel about kids growing up.

Volunteers Needed!

I'm looking for volunteers to work on the Mosaic Sundial during May.

Here's some opportunities:
Monday-Thursday, any time between 9 and 3, work indoors on arranging tiles. This is kind of like doing a puzzle without any rules. Come for an hour and try your hand at it, or show up every day. The set-up is in the hall near the preschool.

Sunday May 15, during Parent Work Day, we will be setting tiles in thinset morter on the sundial itself. Come join me for an hour or all day. I hope to film some of this action. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather.

Robyn

Annalemna

What the heck is an analemna? Is that the name of a new BCSIS kindergartener? Just kidding.

The lopsided figure 8 that you see at the bottom of the sundial, in the black non-shadowed area, is called an Analemna. It is a representation of the path of the sun throughout the year.

If you could record the position of the sun in the sky at the same time every day, you would notice that the sun takes a rather strange path. You might notice that at certain times throughout the year the sun's position not only varies higher and lower (North and South) as you would expect with the change of the seasons, but also slightly east and west. This figure-8 path that the sun makes in the sky is called the analemma. In the movie "Castaway", Tom Hank's character marks an analemna on the wall of his cave, and uses it to calculate the bast time to attempt an escape from the island.
For more information, and in-depth explanation, and some mathematical fun, see http://www.analemma.com/Pages/framesPage.html

Finding North

One of the things we must do before we lay the tiles on the sundial is to find true north.

True north is not the same thing as magnetic north. If you use a compass to find north on a large sundial, the sun shadow will be inaccurate. This is because of magnetic declination, (sometimes called magnetic variation) which is the angle between magnetic north and true north. Magnetic declination changes over time and with location. If you use a compass to find north, you must correct for your particular declination.

For the latitude and longitude at Aurora 7 schoolyard, according to the NOAA site, the declination is = 9° 5' E changing by 0° 8' W/year.You can also find north by casting shadows and measuring them. Click on this for how.
Or we can cast a shadow at exactly noon (or 1:00, with an hour added for Daylight Savings time) because the sun will be exactly south at that particular time, and the shadow will be exactly north.

Another method is to go out on a clear night and look for the north star.

Because we are gong to measure north by casting a shadow, we are using a large tripod on the sundial. A big object= a big shadow. You can tell your friends that is what the tripod is doing.

Beautiful Handmade Tiles for the Sundial

Check out these beautiful tiles.

Here they are, in boxes and strawberry flats. Lots and lots and lots of tiles!

These are the tiles that were created by the kids at BCISIS and High Peaks last year--with lots of help from parent volunteers.

Right now, they are stacked up on a shelf in the new little red shed. We will soon put the tiles on the cement slab that will become the sundial..

This is going to be a joy to make and really fun to explore! By the way, if you are interested in helping create the sundial, click on the volunteer tab at the top of the page.

Robert Adzema Sundial

Robert Adzema is an artist who has been working for years with sundials, and has built many kinds of sundials. Many of them are large and in public places. One of his most colorful sundials is at the Brooklyn Childrens' Museum. It is located outside the museum, and it is constructed of German glass tiles. The colors are bright and childlike, and the theme of a sun in a bright blue sky is the inspiration for my sundial. Robert has offered encouragement on this project, which was invaluable at the beginning stages of design and grant-seeking. thanks Robert!

Making the Tiles with Kids

Most of the tiles that are used in this mosaic have been hand made by the children who attend Aurora 7 schools: High Peaks Elementary and Boulder School of Integrated Studies. The clay was rolled out on a slab roller. The top was smoothed, and then the large sheets of clay cut into 6"x6" squares. Each and every child painted the tiles in a lovely range of colors. The tiles were then cut into smaller pieces, to allow for more detailed mosaic designs. Some of the tiles were cut into triangle shapes, because the round shape of the mosaic needs some tiles that are not square! Teachers came to the tile-painting classroom and painted tiles also. They were assigned a number (the hour) or a domino-like representation of the number. Though we had to lure them into the room with a promised luncheon, they had fun and worked diligently, creating the numbers that will define the sundial's times.

Cement Poured for Sundial

You can see the place where the sundial will be created if you peer through the fence around the Outdoor Classroom work area. This is the view that most of us have seen as we walk by the fence by the sidewalk, or around the fence that secures the construction area.

The construction workers are getting ready to pour the cement for the mosaic sundial base. Here is the form that will hold the cement for the sundial base. The strong wooden walls make a form that will hold the cement while it sets up.

This is the cement in the form, freshly poured, still a little wet-looking. The surface of the cement is left rough, so the thin-set morter will stick to the cement better than if it was smooth. The wooden structure is taken off when the cement is hard to the touch. Here it is... the big circle of cement that will make up the base of the mosaic sundial. This photo is taken from the south side, with the western part of the school inthe background. The cement will have to cure for about 4 weeks before we can affix the tiles. However, it is already hard and solid enough to walk on and watch how your shadow falls. And now...the shadow on the sundial. Doesn't look like much now! Just wiat until we can tell time and look at the beautiful tiles.

Santa Fe Children's Museum interactive Sundial

The interactive sundial at the Santa Fe Children's Museum has inspired and delighted scores of chilren and families. This sundial at the Santa Fe Children's Museum is created with cement, flagstone, tiles and stone. It is made to be durable and withstand the elements. Note that you stand on the present month for your body to cast an accurate shadow.

Our Aurora 7 interactive sundial will also have different months of the year to stand on. The angle of the sun changes over the course of the year, so in order to tell time accurately, first you have to know what month it is. That can be challenging for some youngsters! At least the month doesn't change too often, and by interacting with the sundial regularly, they will have a sense of the passage of months. Some children may use the words on the months to practice their alphabet and reading skills. Older students can note the change in the angle and sort the different months into seasons.