Native Plant Life
This year I won a Crossroads grant to create a tile mosaic and work with Robert Salvato, a skilled wood working artist to create a bench for a public park in Erin, NY. Below are some images from my process of making it. It is now complete and about to be installed. The Town of Erin has scheduled an unveiling to take place October 29th at 1pm in the new park, behind the fire station. Please come and enjoy the festivities if you are in the area. I am told there will be free hot-dogs.
This bench was made possible in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Decentralization Program, administered locally by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.
Tree of Life
I have a friend who makes maple syrup from the trees on her land. Recently, she had a baby girl. She asked me if I would make a wall hanging in black and white of a tree to hang over her daughter’s bed. I have heard that the high contrast between black and white is one of the first visual distinctions the human eye is able to perceive. “A Maple?” I asked? “A tree.”
I am working on it. I took a piece of black linen and smoothed it over a cotton muslin, natural in color, not bleached. I drew a tree in brown pastel and pinned the 2 layers together. Then sewed, changing the path of the branches as needed.
This is just the first few moments in the making of an image to hang over a crib. I thought I’d record the spareness of these few elements before I move on.
Mosaic Bench for Erin Park
Yea! Just before Winter Solstice I found out that the Crossroads grant that wood working artist, sculpture and builder Robert Salvato and I had applied for to create a mosaiced bench had been approved. The bench will be built out of locally rot resistant black locust and have panels where I will make mosaics depicting local flora and fauna. The project is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Decentralization Program, administered locally by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.
Public Art
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- you can’t help but want to touch…
All ten schools in the Ithaca City School District participated in making this ceramic tile mosaic mural. The Ithaca Fine Arts Booster Group and the Ithaca Public Education Initiative generously sponsored the project and the City of Ithaca supported it as well. The mosaic is an image of the Ithaca area watershed with the smooth dark pebbles representing Cayuga Lake inlet and the tributary creeks that flow into it. Students made the tiles that represent the land masses from slabs of clay carefully cut out to create a map.
Mosaic Stories
Ben Franklin Elementary School in Binghamton, NY decided to make up a fable about how the skunk got it’s stripe. They called me in to help them make clay tiles to depict their narrative. They called on renown storyteller Regi Carpenter to help Ms. Culligan’s class of second graders develop their tale. Here are some pictures of students making the tiles from raw clay, performing their story in front of the whole school and many parents, and of myself, art teacher, Athena Negros, and Enrichment specialist, Jill Browne, and Kate Culligan installing the tiles on the wall of the school.
