Community public art: Connie Glover reports on a mosaic art project.

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MANY CITIES IN CANADA AND THE US have developed active public and community public art programs in recent years and this trend has enlivened city spaces and given voice to well-knit communities. Sometimes developers are required to contribute a small percentage of their overall budget for art in their new projects. In other communities, the focus has been more on funding art projects for new and existing civic buildings.

The city of Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver, BC, Canada, has initiated 29 public and community public art projects in the past 10 years. Surrey's culturally diverse district of Newton desired a project that would bring together the community in the creation of art for some of their public spaces. In response to the call for artists in September 2005, I submitted a proposal with collaborating artist Vallalee Hoffman and were awarded the commission to work with the community to produce four glass and ceramic tile mosaic works for the four Newton facilities of the Wave Pool, Recreation Centre, Seniors' Centre and Youth Centre.

Following a period of community outreach, a series of free workshops were held at each of the four facilities. Approximately 100 participants were involved in all aspects of the project, from design development through installation. The project artists led the groups in defining themes and developing imagery for each project, with facility use and users as a major thematic concept.

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At the recreation centre, a 3 x 1.6 m (10 ft x 5 ft). mural was constructed and installed on an exterior wall near the entrance. It features facility activities of skating, hockey and karate, with children tumbling across the bottom border and the word 'community' in English, French, Punjabi and Chinese.

The mural Metamorphosis was constructed at the Youth Centre. It features a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, a young girl with arms upraised and a snow boarder. At the wave pool, a sea theme was chosen and mosaics fabricated for the four sides of an exterior pillar at the building entrance.

The seniors' centre project involved the design and fabrication of garden-theme mosaics for a pre-existing 4 m long concrete bench. This was the most ambitious of the four projects and was completed over a four-month period.

For each of the projects the design phase included using an overhead projector was used to enlarge images. Once the overall design was created, it was cut into sections for mosaic construction on door skin (thin plywood). The paper design was placed on the door skin, followed by a layer of wax paper to act as glue resistant and then a layer of fibreglass mesh over all. Colour schemes were worked out and the mosaic begun construction included scoring, nipping and cutting glass and ceramic tile. Participants worked collaboratively on different sections of the pieces, blending glass and ceramic tile to create colourful imagery. Students of M.B. Sanford, a local elementary school, created the clay text which was incorporated in each of the works. When each section was completed, it was stuck with white glue to the underlying mesh. Installation occurred once each project was completed. Each of the four sites had specific installation requirements but all were installed using a variety of thin-set mortar.

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The project has been well received by the Newton community and has given the participants an opportunity to engage in art making for their neighbourhood while learning skills and engaging in arts practice that might not otherwise be available to them. This unique artwork effectively ties the civic buildings together and will be a landmark for the city of Surrey.

The process of community art is an exciting and effective means of community building. It enhances public spaces while promoting a feeling of belonging and ownership. This type of activity draws a certain kind of individual--usually creative and collaboratively-minded. A group spirit develops and a great deal of talent inevitably surfaces. The process of decision making is enjoyable, most often demonstrating the wisdom of group decision making. In culturally diverse communities such as Newton, residents come together to work collaboratively and they find a familiarity develops and the connection results in the breaking down of barriers. When civil society resources are used in this and similar ways, the result can be a kindling of global citizenship. Feeling engaged locally thus contributes ultimately to global peace and understanding.

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Connie Glover is a Canadian ceramic artist living near Vancouver, BC. She has worked in clay for more than 30 years producing sculptural pieces and functional work. In the past few years, her work has gravitated toward public and community public art. Her first project completed in 1999, Rising Tide, was a 350 sq. ft. seascape on a three storey elevator shaft in a Vancouver shopping plaza, (see Ceramics Technical, May 2001), and www.connieglover.com. The Newton Mosaic Project is her most recently completed community public art work.