Mosaic Fernwood - Phase I
Project Planning Journal
After 5 years in this home, we, the Schlackls, are leaving. But there is no way we can go without leaving our mark.
2424 Chambers Street, Fernwood
The house next door (2424 Chambers Street) was built in 1853 and the family living there has done so since 1971. Perched high above the street with a great view of George Jay Elementary school, the property is fronted by a 5 foot high retaining wall that's over 50 feet long - a great space for a mosaic mural!
Ever since we moved in next door the wall has receive numerous coats of grey paint only to be covered again by graffiti art and tagging. Margaret Cox, who owns the house, began explaining to me just how this wall had become a graffiti wall. 6 years ago her youngest son Robin got a job as power-washer and for practice she let him wash the wall. At that time the wall was covered with moss and ivy and needed a good cleaning. Needless to say, Robin's efforts were quite successful, however, ever since the wall's been clean, it has been used for graffiti and tagging; only a few times has there been nice artwork.
So, Margaret liked my idea and proposed it to her family and they agreed that a community art project on their wall was a great idea. A new community designed and built mural will bring wonderful new energy to the neighbourhood and the wall. We decided to do the project this summer.
Chambers Street Wall, Fernwood
Mosaic the Chambers Street Wall was the original name for his project, however when I took my project plan to the local neighbourhood association to gain their support to help me spread the word around Fernwood, they agreed to help with advertising the project and providing meeting space. So we set a public meeting for the project for June 21st, the first day of summer - perfectly suited for a summer project. This would be the community's first time to get involved with the project. Later that night the vice-president of the association, Lenore Rankin, called me to see if I would be interested in making the project bigger to include a mosaic for Fernwood Square. Of course I replied "yse" and we set a meeting for later that same week to discuss it further.
Roberta, Lenore & Shylene
I met Lenore and Roberta Martell of the Fernwood Community Center that same Friday. We discussed the ideas behind Mosaic the City and Community Unity. I explained the plan for Mosaic the Chambers Street Wall and my timeline for this summer. They told me how they hoped to get involved and how we could tie these two projects together into what would become Mosaic Fernwood - Phase I. So exciting!! We hosted our June 21st meeting at the Fernwood House and has a few community members attend - the community unity part of the project was taking off. With planning now under way, the real hard work was ahead.
Springridge Park - Mosaic Fernwood Phase II
Discussions began about Phase II of the project which lead to ideas for Springridge Park, Vic High, local seniors groups, and more; all to be implemented as the second phase to Mosaic Fernwood next year.
First Meeting for Mosaic Fernwood
We have a team and some community support too. Six people came to the meeting each with excitement and creative energy to share with the project. It should be great to see all the ideas their people bring. We booked the workshop dates and came up with the theme statement; "Our Community In Action - Creating, Growing, ??" or something like that - still a little tweaking to do. SO, now we are planning to create a mosaic mural that will take several years to complete. First we will paint the wall using a simple background, mid ground and fore ground. We will then fill in the mural details using images suggested by the community.
 Fernwood Community Association |
 Mural at Gladstone |
Step by step, year-by-year we will add mosaic images to the wall. Each image being its own mosaic panel. All the panels will work together to create a wonderful mosaicked mural.
June 30th, 2004
Moving Forward.
Great things are moving forward on this project. I have been meeting people almost everyday that are interested in learning more about MtC and getting involved with MF. This is so amazing. For a project I thought was going to be short and sweet, it's getting connected to the community and creating community unity for me - Perfect!
On Monday, June 28th, exactly one week into the project planning phase, we had our first artistic meeting. We took photos of the wall and found it is 5' x 48' - quite large! Our strategy is to create individual mosaic elements of the mural, a few each year until they are all complete. Breaking the project into several phases is the most reasonable approach to rather large wall we've chosen to mosaic. At the meeting, some fantastic ideas were shared and some concepts sketched out. It will be nice to know what will come through the design workshops and where the final design for this phase will take us - exciting for sure!
Today, June 30th, I had a short presentation for the Economic Development Committee of Fernwood regarding the project in the area this summer. It was an awesome meeting to attend as the mayor of Victoria, Allen Low, was there and he remembered me from last year's Mosaic the Market project I completed in Market Square down town. That made my week! I was on the agenda in a few forms:
- Mosaic Fernwood - a large part of Revitalization project for Fernwood
- Using the Fernwood House to store Mosaic the City materials
- The FCA/ FCC supporting me in a non-profit sort of way, so I can get donations in larger form and give out tax receipts.
This will likely be a one-year contract and we can re-visit this next summer. Hopefully these partnerships lend themselves to my project and our financial needs there in. - Fern Fest - where we will have our large unveiling event for Mosaic Fernwood.
So many great things- so fast. This project is taking off and becoming so much more the I imagined. I am feeling very excited about the future progress of MtC and know the money will come.
July 6, 2004
Village 900 - Interview with Amanda Farrell
This morning Shylene was interviewed about Mosaic the City on Village 900. It was a short introduction to the general project and a bit about the upcoming Fernwood workshops. Hopefully the station will come on-board as a media sponsor. That would be great. Special thanks to Amanda for arranging for this interview and for her interest in Mosaic the City.