Clay in Class

Reflection by Jennifer Koons

The City of Mission Viejo’s event, Arts Alive, elevated arts education to a new level while creating a sense of community on April 24, 2010.  Janet C. Panozzo, Cha-Rie Tang, Melanie Yarak and I collaborated on a community mural that represents the annual intergenerational Spring Arts Festival. This is the third community mural to be posted along the creek trail, representing another amazing event held at the Oso Viejo Community Park on the Village Green.  Everyone was welcome to use Laguna Clay Company’s Creatable Colors to glaze the cuerda seca tiles and bring them to life.

Focus on Art Technique and Art History

A key aspect at this event is to educate the community members on art technique and art history.  Education boards, cuerda seca cards and architectural style color guides were important parts of enhancing the experience at our booth in the Ceramic Studio.  Participants were invited to explore photos and explanations of the process we go through to create a mural in a day with the education boards.  Beginning with a theme, research, and composition to the method of cuerda seca and silk screening the image, the community learned different aspects of design and production.  The cuerda seca cards were a user friendly educational tool with the technique and vocabulary for glaze application on cuerda seca tiles.  The color guides and plentiful supply of bottle applicators made the booth nearly self-sustainable.  Community members thrived!  If only we had more chairs…

Creating a Community Mural in One Day

The people who created this community mural ranged in age and experience.  Some of the participants have already become skilled from working on the Artes de la Vida 2009 and Pacific Symphony murals.  They were familiar with the cuerda seca technique (dry-line) and loved the 20 color palette of vibrant Creatable Colors glazes.  For some, this was their first experience in creating the art form, and we were impressed at how so many people took such pride in the traditional work.  The young through the elderly held concentration in glazing their tiles with care and newly learned skill.  For many, the technique brought them right into the moment.  The experience created this day is one to be remembered by many.  We came together and created the Arts Alive 2010 mural that will be enjoyed for decades to come.

Creatable Colors Glazes

The products from Laguna Clay Company that made this community mural possible are the Creatable Colors underglazes and bottle applicators. Without these products, participation could be limited to only the highly skilled or well trained.  The ease of use and forgiveness of error is what now makes community participation in public art a reality!  We have used the Creatable Colors to formulate a palette of over seventy colors. The larger two ounce bottles are more flexible and easier to handle.  The range of size in the needle-like applicators was changed depending on the size of the area to be glazed.  This allowed for more precision by the participants.  Even we discovered new possibilities with Creatable Colors through the creativity of the youth as they created extraordinary effects.

About Arts Alive 2010

The mural represents the Arts Alive 2010 festival so there are several forms of art represented including chalk art, still photography, movies/theater, painting with the Georgia O’Keefe flower and a Diego Rivera mural. Spanish Revival, Craftsman and Frank Lloyd Wright are types of architecture depicted in the mural.  Transportation design is seen with the cars and airplanes.  Product design is represented with the Green & Green glass lamp and ceramics with the Gladding-McBean cups.  The theme of this year’s festival was the 1930’s and 1940’s, so on the left panel of the mural, we have represented what Mission Viejo may have looked like back then with the Saddleback Mountains, orange trees, agriculture and of course the cattle ranching.  Surrounding the mural is a link that represents the four mile paper “Chain of Caring” that was touchingly linked together at the festival for Rachel’s Challenge.  The four corners of the border include the city logos with a rose, oak leaf, brown bear and red-tailed hawk.

My dad, Joe Koons, ceramic mentor to many, was the inspiration behind these community murals.  He had offered workshops like, “Mural in an Hour,” to arts educators and met Dru Maurer, Cultural Services Supervisor, at an arts education conference.  He put our team of four artists together and consulted with us to create a series of community murals to enhance the city’s creek trail.  In the process, something even more important has been created:  a sense of community here in Mission Viejo.  A short time after the mural’s completion, our team’s mentor passed away quietly and unexpectedly at home.  We soon realized that when he passed away at 11:12 pm on May 4, our mural was in the kiln, transitioning from a fragile state into a material that will last forever.  This loving thought caused us to add a line to the mural’s plaque, “Dedicated to Joe Koons at 865 degrees Fahrenheit.”

See the Arts Alive 2010 Mural