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October 17, 2001
Local Artist and Neighborhood Youth Brighten Western Addition Playground with New Art Work
Approximately 20 Western Addition children painted the tiles for local artist Ruth O'Day’s just-finished mosaic art work, a linear pattern of bright multi-colored circles and triangles along the seating wall in front of the newly renovated clubhouse at the Margaret Hayward Playground, 1016 Laguna St. in San Francisco. The youth, who ranged in age from 6 to 12, gathered at the playground recreation center, where O'Day taught them how to paint the colorful liquid clay underglaze on hand-cut tiles that she had piled onto huge baker’s trays for transporting to and from the workshop site. O'Day then applied the clear finishing glaze to the tiles and fired them in a kiln to produce the hard and shiny surface. "The project gave the kids a chance to contribute something beautiful and lasting in their neighborhood," says O'Day, who has guided numerous other Bay Area groups of both children and adults in the creation of public art works. "The workshops can be a lot of extra work," O'Day admits, "but I can never pass up the magic that happens when people come together and find how easily they can make something that enhances their living spaces and the community." O'Day has also created a second work for the Margaret Hayward Playground-a pair of 30- by 30-inch textured mosaic medallions on the front exterior wall of the building. The medallions, composed of tiles in a variety of browns, greens and yellows, are designed to complement existing decorative elements on the building façade. The new pieces were commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, in collaboration with the Recreation and Park Department, under the city’s art enrichment ordinance. The ordinance provides for an art enrichment allocation equivalent to two percent of the construction budget for a new or renovated city structure. Some of Ruth O'Day’s other public art works include the recently completed mosaic along the exterior wall of the new playground at Turk and Hyde streets, San Francisco, sidewalk mosaics for the Mission Housing Corporation, San Francisco, a series of murals for the Over 60 Health Center, Berkeley, and mosaics for the benches of the Peralta Community Garden, Berkeley.