Not Your Grandmother's Park Benches

During the summer of 2007 I spent some time working in a mosaic studio as a production artist. There I worked alongside two other artists, Mary McDermott and Lily Russo, mosaicking 4 large park benches.Designed by Laurel True for her True Mosaics Studio, they are now in two parks in Brentwood, California, a small city in the Bay Area. These first photos are of the Rainbow Benches.Aptly named, their tops - set by the designer herself - blend all the colors of the rainbow, from yellows to purples. The orange ball between them represents the sun as it shines through the "raindrops" on the bench seats, thereby creating the "rainbows."This set is in Rainbow's End Park on Solitude Way (near Lone Tree Way) in Brentwood, CA.

The second set are the Kaleidoscope Benches.First we mosaicked the kaleidoscope designs onto mesh. Then used thinset to adhere them to the benches. Next we mosaicked the benches themselves. And finally we did the grouting and sealing. The substrate for these is foam, carved to the designer's specifications, which is then covered with cement and fiberglass mesh. These are the size of small cars! Think cement Mini Coopers covered in tile and grout! Heavy and beautiful.

These benches are in Kaleidoscope Park on Handel Street (near Lone Tree Way) in Brentwood, CA.

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.