Mosaic Benches in Willow Park, Oakland

After you've checked out the art show in the previous post, drive about 5 more blocks to see 9 beautiful mosaic benches.
Willow Park is a small patch of green in West Oakland that has recently been upgraded and beautified for the neighborhood to use and enjoy. As part of the upgrade, True Mosaics Studio was commissioned to create mosaic insets for the tops of 9 new benches. I and Mary McDermott, another mosaic artist, provided the production work at this studio for designer True.
The artwork is meant to invoke the look of African cloth and is very intricate. The words were chosen as part of a cross-cultural project involving young kids in this Oakland neighborhood and in Ghana, West Africa. Both groups were separately asked to choose words representing concepts that were important to them. The words that were common to both groups were used in this art.
About 3/4 of the pieces are small and were cut on a tile saw to fit together nearly perfectly. The result is an awesome combination of color, flow and precision. Their sizes range from approximately 4' to approximately 6' in length. They were finished and installed in September, 2007.
These are worth going out of your way to see.