Take a walk through North Middle Shooks Run Park and you’ll see it: the first lamp post base wrapped in a beautiful green and yellow mosaic made by our neighbors.
It started in the spring with a vision to make the new concrete lamp bases (caissons) in North and Mid Shooks Run Park more beautiful. We had a great example from Concrete Couch on the lamp bases near the playground in Mid Shooks Run Park, installed in 2012. In the search to make it happen, we found a neighbor, Frank, who has a ceramics studio. A dozen neighbors met to hand make tile. By the time the last of the grout dried in mid-August, the result was a lamp post base covered edge to edge in handmade and hand-glazed ceramic tile.
How it came together. Frank opened up his ceramics studio for two sessions. First, neighbors got their hands in the clay and shaped the tile from scratch — pie-shaped pieces for the top, edge pieces, small accent medallions. A few weeks later, everyone came back to glaze what they’d made, choosing greens and yellows as the color base. Meanwhile, we picked up a batch of commercial tile in white, light gray, and dark gray at a great price from Dylan, the manager at the Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity ReStore on Wahsatch. We cut it down to size ourselves, then brought it back to Frank to reglaze — firing the same yellow glaze over all three came back in three different shades, which is why the finished mosaic has more depth to it than a single flat color ever could. Thanks to Dylan and the ReStore team for helping the project’s budget go further.
Installation day was August 8, right in the middle of Summer Fest — Rudy, Amy, Seth, and about a dozen other neighbors spent an hour and a half setting tile with thinset, edges first, then the tops, then the sides. A few days later came the last step: cleaning the joints and applying grout.
The result is one lamp post base, done, and proof that this neighborhood can gather to improve even a plain piece of city infrastructure into something beautiful and lasting.
Round Two: We Want to Do This Again and Again
One caisson dressed up and now we know what it takes to do the next ones: how much clay, how much tile, how many hours. We learned a ton in round one and the cost was about $169 all in. We will be more efficient as the project progresses.
We’re planning to take on two more lamp caissons this fall, and we need volunteers and donations for materials.
Volunteers. Every stage is open: shaping tile at a garage session, glazing, setting tile on installation day, or helping with the grout. No experience needed; we’ll show you. We’re also looking for someone to learn the process and lead round three!
Materials support. Clay, glaze, thinset, and grout aren’t expensive, but they add up, and every dollar donated goes straight into the next caisson.
If you’d like to help with either, reach us at info@msrna.org or the volunteer form at www.middleshooksrun.org/volunteer.
Thanks to Frank for hosting both sessions in his studio and for his expertise, and to everyone who showed up to get dirty, make something beautiful, and make new friends.
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