Lis Healey and Jen Maufrais approached me back in 2018, asking if I'd be willing to help them with a massive project. They had successfully written a grant to the Neighborhood Partnering Program to create a 150' long mosaic on a reviled retaining wall in their neighborhood. They already had a preliminary design and a community of excited people but needed someone to create a game plan and oversee the project.

I was super excited to join their team. I had just finished the "Community Quilt" and wanted to try my community mosaic methods on a larger scale.

I think the drawing session is a very important first step in the community mosaic process. It's quick, easy, and gets the creative juices flowing. I drew out their wall, with its bare bones design of trees and houses on a rolling landscape, on brown paper. Then, we gathered at the local library and "filled in" many of the large blank spaces with interesting elements – plants, flowers, animals, bicyclists, ufos, you. name it – and reserved real estate for those events on the larger drawing. Note: If you try anything like this at home, it helps to "grid" the entire mural and label each square foot, like section 1A, 1B, etc. It's the only way to organize it later when the whole thing is in pieces!

Next came the tile making. We rolled slabs and used our drawings to sketch out and cut our tiles. We also made a lot of bark and leaves for our big trees, as well as a good amount of random shapes to add interest and texture. I taught the first workshop, and Lis taught the remainder. She rolled A LOT of clay!

Then Glazing! And a Pandemic! After the first glaze workshop we could no longer gather due to COVID. Lis made glazing kits and personally delivered tiles all over her neighborhood so that people could finish putting color on their pieces. Blackshear Elementary, where Lis teaches art, closed its doors and we lost access to its kiln. This was the year that we started wondering if this project would ever be done...But eventually all the pieces were fired (primarily by Lis) and delivered back to me for assembly.

The mural assembly is may favorite part. Discovering all the tiles, lovingly packed by Lis and Jen, and sorting them into a composition, was delightful work. My mind loves the process of creating order out of the randomness – of making all the tiles exist in the same imaginary world. I sorted, cut and mounted all of the ceramic pieces on fiberglass mesh, cut the mesh into the aforementioned "grid" and labeled each section before returning the entire mural, meshed and boxed, to Lis and Jen.

Then we started the glass workshops. All of the unfilled space on the mesh was slotted for glass background. I had labeled what color glass went where, so during a workshop a person received a square with some ceramic glued to it already and random empty spots labeled "blue," "green" etc. Then they would cut and glue the appropriate glass to that spot. After all of the mesh was filled in with glass, the entire mural came back to me again!

Transferring the mural back and forth was a new, sometimes nerve wracking experience. The Southern Oaks mural budget only allotted so much for an artist fee (me), so Lis and Jen were on their own through many of the workshops. Fortunately these women are powerful creators and organizers. I was amazed by their dedication and endurance throughout this project.

Installation took a couple months. It was bad timing that it coincided with the heat of summer which makes the thinset and grout misbehave! Here are my kids and their friend, totally beat after a day of grouting with me!

Mostly I installed the mural by myself, though Lis and Jen were able to come out and help some, as well as artist and neighbor Nancy Barnes. And towards the end I had an army of neighborhood volunteers help with the sealing and fussy cleaning!

Lis grouting the “4th of July Parade” section

The neighborhood was helpful and present in many ways during installation. I will never forget, when a sudden squall came in from the South one afternoon, Sally Jo came running out of her house with a tarp crying, "The Mural!" and helped me cover the still wet thinset. Becky brought me gallons of iced tea. Another kind person brought donuts and still others brought lunch sometimes. During one stressfull week, during which a mentally ill man became aggressively obsessed with me and the mural, the neighbors organized an hour by hour mural watch. I literally had someone keep me company, all the time, for the entire week! Never have I felt so appreciated and cared for while making an art project.

Finally Southern Oaks has a beautiful, beloved mural that over 200 people from the neighborhood had their hands in making. I was honored to be the director of this project. Southern Oaks is a truly a delightful community of wonderful people, and this art reflects that.

The mural is WAY too long to photograph properly. Check back soon for a video link. Also, for more information about this project, check out the cool website Lis created, detailing the journey! http://somosaic.org