McCarver Mosaic Completed!

It's been a tough few days. I have had 55 square feet of mosaic on mesh in my studio for the last month, just waiting to install it at McCarver park here in Tacoma. And last month the weather was mostly good, but I had to wait and wait and wait and wait for the contractor to finish the concrete forms for me to install.

I do not like waiting when I have work to install. Then, nothing short of a miracle happened and they were ready for me and I had less than a week to install it because a giant storm is coming in this weekend and I needed to hurry it on up!

Can you see the octopus hiding in here?

The good news is the piece is installed and grouted. The bad news is I don't know if my knees and elbows and back will ever recover from 4 very long days of kneeling on concrete. But I'll just shut up now and show you the completed piece since I would much rather it be done than not in pain!

If you don't live in Tacoma, you probably haven't heard of this park and its giant remodel. The park is dedicated to Zina Linnik, a Hilltop resident that was abducted and murdered in 2007. She was only 12 years old.

This park was already slated to be renovated, but the neighborhood realized it would be great to memorialize the park to Zina and so more money was raised and now my mosaics are there and fabulous carved tile by Claudia Riedener as well as giant kinetic sculptures and large Urkrainian eggs. (Zina was Ukrainian.) In front of my Octopus bench is a poem dedicated to Zina that Claudia inscribed in tiles. We worked hard to make sure the pieces are colorful and playful.
Another long bench with mosaics also incorporates tiles that students and teachers decorated. This one was a challenge (30 feet long not being the least of it) because I had to figure out a way to incorporate all of those tiles and still make it look good and not mish-mash.

One of the contractors cut out this little bit on the front of the seat and I added mosaic. I like it; it was a very late addition to the party but I think it looks like a little waterfall.