Navysphere  ©2004
Long Beach Navy Memorial
stainless steel, brass and bronze sculpture with porcelain enamel panels
15′ high
Fabricators: Cinnabar, CA and Enameltec, Canada
Queensway Bay, Long Beach, CA

The Long Beach Navy Memorial is located on city parkland at Rainbow Harbor, south of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. In order to provide a context and historical narrative about the importance of the Naval presence to the City of Long Beach, a 15-foot high armillary sphere was constructed to contain images conveying the story of the Navy in Long Beach. An armillary sphere is an ancient instrument of maritime navigation — images of Long Beach naval history replace the traditional images of celestial bodies that normally circumscribe the main ring. These images were created through the technique of collage, fabricated into porcelain enamel, bringing together pictures evoking the history and people of the Long Beach Naval Station and Shipyard with images of ocean travel throughout the ages.

Illuminations ©2006
Cerritos, California 50th Anniversary Sculpture     10′ x 6′ each page

Stainless steel, glass mosaic, glass
Fabricators: Carlson and Co., CA and Franz Mayer of Munich, Germany

When the artist received the commission to produce an artwork commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Cerritos, she visited its Library, which is a statement of how much culture and education are valued by the Cerritos community, and the decision was made to focus on education as the basic theme for the 50th Anniversary sculpture. The artist presented a sculpture in the form of a large open book. This sculpture is now located between the Cerritos Library and the Cerritos City Hall.

Cerritos is known as a “Tree City”, because of its many parks and green spaces within its city limits, and the Tree of Life was proposed as a metaphor for its 50-year growth – citizens continuously growing – intellectually, spiritually, and financially. The Tree of Life has existed in every culture, throughout recorded time, representing learning, growth, and development, and was particularly pertinent because of the diverse cultural backgrounds of the people of Cerritos. It can be seen in African woodcarvings, Asian tapestries, New and Old Testament images, Mexican ceramics, Islamic decorations, Christian paintings, Jewish Kabala, Buddhist wall murals and Mayan paintings. The Tree of Life reinforces the continuation of growth, and the many positive contributions that the citizens of Cerritos make toward their community’s life.

Octopus Garden © 2007
Entryway Mosaic for Private Residence, Irvine, California
Tumbled Byzantine glass mosaic
6′ diameter
Fabricators: Mosaika Art and Design, Canada

The Octopus Garden, a mosaic relating to the nearby ocean, was created for the entryway to a private residence in Irvine, California. Because one of the residents was originally from New Zealand, the Maori symbol of the Koru, which represents hope for the future, and the unfolding of a new life was chosen to be held in one of the octopus arms. To symbolize the secure place that such a home provides, another arm holds a lighthouse. Fish and waves from an early Medieval manuscript surround the octopus, integrating both the Past and the Present.

Local Odysseys ©1994
Metro Blue Line, Los Angeles, Anaheim Street Station
40″ diameter porcelain enamel panels in pre-existing pylons
Fabricator: Enameltec, Canada

Anaheim Street Metro Station, Local Odysseys, is about voyage — the trip to Los Angeles from Long Beach becomes a metaphor for the larger journey one takes through life. The work honors each of the dominant communities in the city — Latino, African American, Asian and South Pacific, and Caucasian, and contains photographs of 51 stellar volunteers representing each of these groups. The people pictured were chosen by community leaders from more than 100 volunteers who head neighborhood associations, clean grafitti from their schools, tutor students, bring meals to seniors, and work in churches, schools and community centers. City elements were chosen because they are recognizable to all of those living in Long Beach, such as the Queen Mary and Villa Riviera; the large art historical figures were used to symbolize the different major communities of the city and contain qualities to which we all could aspire. The resulting artwork is fourteen, 40″ diameter, 4-color collages made of porcelain enamel, and was fabricated by Enameltec in Toronto, Canada and installed by Carlson & Company of Sun Valley, California in 1994. The piece has become a popular neighborhood focal point, and was pictured in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Art in Transit” publication, as well as El Pais (the main Spanish newspaper); Environmental Art (a French magazine); and the Press Telegram, the Long Beach newspaper.

Sun Salutations,  ©2007
Sun Valley Health Center, Sun Valley, CA
Byzantine glass, hand-painted ceramic tile, and photo-transferred porcelain tile
Exterior mosaic 72″H x 120″W Hand-painted ceramic tile
Fabricators: Mosaika Art & Design, Canada

The Sun was chosen as the primary metaphor for this project since the word “sun” is part of Sun Valley’s name, and because it is an image of regeneration, warmth and healing. The artist wanted the people entering this facility, and sitting in its waiting room, to immediately feel this “warmth”. All of the works in this project began as photomontage designs and were translated into Byzantine glass, hand-painted ceramic tile, photo-transferred porcelain tile and translucent colored-glass windows.

A 72″ x 120″ ceramic mural on the exterior wall above the entryway of the health facility shows a girl and boy, made of photo-transfer tile, within an altered 17th Century manuscript by Trismosin. The boy looks out toward a better future, while the girl collects medicinal herbs for healing.

There are two large mosaics, 50″ x 50″ and 50″ x 60″ on the two larger curved walls of the waiting room, and a smaller mosaic, 18″ x 18″ in the middle of the soffit trim that surrounds the reception area.
The two large mosaics combine images of contemporary people, within art historical landscapes, where the sun is the central element. In the smaller of the two large mosaics, an image of a little boy is shown hanging from a sun, excerpted from a landscape by Vincent Van Gogh. In the larger, an image of two women and two children is depicted walking toward the sun (healing) through an altered 17th Century engraving by Matthus Merian. In the smallest mosaic, above the reception area, a boy and girl are depicted playing inside the cosmic gateway to Eternity taken from a painting, strongly influenced by the South American Mayan culture, by Thaedra MabraKhan.

Within the rotunda-shaped waiting room of the building, there is an 18″H decorative trim, which appears dimensional, of hand-painted ceramic tile, encircling all of its curved walls, including the upper soffit of the reception area.
Selected translucent panels of colored laminated glass are installed in the thirteen 2’x 2′ windows in the upper walls of the rotunda, which echo the colors of the mosaics and trim below, and cast their colors on the indented walls surrounding them.

Directions, completed 2010
Long Beach Transit Bus Station Enhancements
ceramic tiles 12″ x 12″ to cover approximately 30′
samples of ceramic tiles 12″ x 12″ each

For the Long Beach Transit Station at 6th Street and Long Beach Boulevard, approximately 140 fabricated ceramic tiles (12″ x 12″ each) will be installed at two different sites, across the street from one another. These groups of tiles will present hand, figure and art historical images in “motion,” culled from different time periods, representing different cultures. Some of the images will be black & white photographs; others will be color and black and white drawings or paintings. The fabricated tiles will be in groups of hands, figures, and art historical images gesturing in the direction of the 6th Street Blue Line Metro Station.

These groups will be connected via a “blue line” of fabricated blue tiles. When joined together in this manner, they will create a visual dialogue about non-verbal communication, speech, and gesture, while simultaneously showing the way to the crosswalks at Long Beach Boulevard leading to the Blue Line Metro Station.

In Vogue I, August 1997-January 1998
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Windows on Wilshire” Series
curated by Howard Fox
four electrostatically-printed photographic cut-outs
2 windows, 96″ x 138″

These two window installations, In Vogue I and In Vogue II, were created for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Windows on Wilshire” series. These works were installed on August 7th, 1997 and were exhibited through January 1998.

For my two installations, I created four large electrostatically-printed photographic cut-outs. The title of the two windows, In Vogue, has several references. The former May Company department store used these windows to present the very latest in fashion choices. The viewer, seeing these spaces in their new museum context, discover that the examples of ideal beauty upon which he or she measure him/herself are here drawn from art history instead of the usual fashion showroom. Similarly, what is popular in the world of art, like the world of fashion, seems to change every few months, like the store windows themselves.

Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Venus, each seven feet tall and in “living” color, represent the ideal physiology in paint and sculpture, while simultaneously presenting themselves as commercially produced cutouts. They tower above, but in relation to, the ordinary man and woman, each less than six feet tall, in black and white, drawn from popular magazines. These “ordinary people” stand in for us, their backs facing the street, while we the real viewers, walk or drive by outside the window.