Description

Before designing this mural for the front entrance of the newly constructed library in Imperial Beach, the artist knew the project had to be about living on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Imperial Beach is a unique city pinched into a small southwest corner of the United States next to the northwest corner of Mexico. The inspiration for the design came to the artist when she first visited the project site that was already under construction. Typically, Kim Emerson’s large projects are inspired by nature and the representing communities. But when she first visited the site she couldn’t help but notice the awe-inspiring huge steel I-beams in the form of a rip-curl wave looming over the main interior space. It was then that she knew she wanted her mosaic design to replicate that dynamic curve of the building’s roofline that compliments the architecture. Being near the Pacific Ocean and catching that wave of life is what ultimately inspired the design, and after the installation, she wrote a poem about it (see below).  

The community members of IB desperately wanted to volunteer with the making of the mosaic mural, but the contractor could not allow that activity due to possible liability issues.  Regardless, the artist knew that she wanted to involve the community in some way. At the time of commencing the project the artist put out a call for the collection of broken dishes, collectables or “mementos”. People came in droves with boxes of “stuff”. It was all brought back to the studio, the artist cleaned, sorted by color, cut out the best parts of those donations nipping here and there, and ultimately incorporated them into the assembly in studio.

For this public art project, Kim Emerson worked with a combination of highly durable materials, mostly high-fired ceramic tile and Mexican smalti glass. To generate the multiple trays of tesserae, the ceramic tile is first cut from larger size tile on a wet-saw, and the smalti is washed and sorted by color. The tesserae is laid into place dry and with tweezers over the full-scale printed cartoon on tables in the artist’s studio. The flat sections of tesserae were taped temporarily with tile tape, and the more textured/rounded community generated materials were adhered to fiberglass mesh. The entire design was sectioned, numbered and mapped, then carefully delivered to the site, and adhered one section at a time directly to the pre-prepped masonry wall of the building.