Mosaic Inspiration

Tonight I got elected to our neighborhood's Homeowners Association Board. I also gave an impromptu presentation about a grant I am applying for to build a community-based art installation/mural in our neighborhood park.

"The Children's Park," as it's called, is a small clearing in the wooded area of our neighborhood with a playground, benches, and a picnic table. It's nothing fancy, but we love it. The kids have spent a lot of time on the swings and monkey bars and merry-go-round and I have spent a lot of time on this bench talking to the other moms and dads. It's where we first met the people we now call friends.

In the Renton Reporter last year I saw an article about how our city was offering grants for neighborhood projects. Inspired by a trip we took to Vashon Island where I saw a library playground decorated with brightly colored mosaics, I started talking up an idea to do a similar project in our park in the form of a mural underneath the park bench. The idea has evolved to possibly include marbles, small tiles or pottery pieces, stones, hand prints, and small toys, rocks, or broken dishware from as many people in our neighborhood as we can convince to get involved. The other night I Googled phrases like "park mural," "marble mosaic," "handprints," and "toys in cement" to create a sort of vision board to share with people and send in with my grant proposal. Here it is:

I presented it to our homeowners association meeting tonight, feeling a bit presumptuous being a newbie to the neighborhood and proposing a big colorful change to a place where others in the room have lived for 35+ years. But they seemed to like it! Also, unbeknownst to me, one of the people in charge of determining the grant awards happened to be in the room, and she seemed to LOVE it. I'm starting to think we might actually DO THIS. Every day I walk past that grassy spot and and try to envision a mosaic in it's place. I can't wait to see it for real.