Creating Walls of Enduring Beauty
     
 

Paul B. Stephens Exceptional Education Center is a school in Clearwater, Florida. This fantastic tile installation by Cathy honors the founding students and staff of the school. The tile piece covers 400 square feet of wall space that borders a courtyard area in the center of the school.

The concept for the project was to create a work of art that incorporates the School's logo and slogan while involving the students and faculty in the actual creative process.

In the first photograph you can see Cathy across the courtyard putting the finishing touches on the installation phase of the project.

  
 

 
 



The slogan for the school is 'Reach for the Stars'. Cathy facilitated each student and staff member painting (with underglazes) around a star shape. Every star tile has the name of the person that painted the tile hand lettered on it. Then Cathy had each person place their hand on a tile and outline around it.

Sixteen tile pieces make up one unit and each unit is two square feet. Cathy painted the other eight tile pieces for each unit. She then glazed each tile and fired them in our kiln.

Below you see how the pattern is repeated as the tiles go along the wall. You can also see how individual each hand and star are, and how wonderfully personal this makes the whole work. As a community art project this work simply radiates a rich warmth and closeness that exceeded everyone's expectation. The most common expression given about the work to Cathy is "It is absolutely wonderful, so much better than we ever hoped it would be. We are so thrilled to have it."








The next two pictures are from installation day. We hired a professional tile contractor that has extensive experience installing art tile pieces.



The whole crew with Cathy. We had seven people to install the piece.



And finally in the center of the whole courtyard area wall...