“Wade in Water,” a 3700-square-foot ceramic tile work by San Francisco artist JoeSam., enlivens the interior surroundings of a new community swimming pool with large and colorful images of lobsters, dolphins, a seahorse and other creatures of the sea. The 12 fanciful reliefs extend across two walls and part of a third surrounding the Martin Luther King, Jr. Pool in the Bayview District.

The work is JoeSam.’s first public art piece in ceramic tile. Complementing the artist’s marine creations are smaller images of imaginary fish painted by neighborhood youth on pairs of one-foot-square tiles. The young apprentices went to after-school workshops at nearby Joseph Lee Recreation Center, where JoeSam. and two assistants, Heidi Hardin and Malik Seneferu, shepherded them through the study of basic fish shapes, their first drawings on paper, a succession of colorful paintings, the tracing of final drawings onto the tiles, and the application of several coats of glaze to the tile images. JoeSam. has arranged the approximately 70 images in a broken horizontal band below the main work. Artists Barbara Ockel and Jason Webster assisted JoeSam. in the fabrication of “Wade In Water.”

JoeSam. (who spells his name with a period) is a mixed media artist, whose vivid, whimsical paintings and sculptures reflect cultural diversity and community issues. His previous public art pieces in San Francisco are “Hope Flight,” a collection of vivid bird sculptures for the Mission Police Station juvenile facility, and “Folks in the Hood,” a horizontal arrangement of joyful painted steel figures along the Tenderloin Recreation Center fence. He has also created major public art projects for numerous other cities, including Oakland, Los Angeles, San Jose, Denver, Cleveland and Orlando.

“Wade in Water” was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission in accord with the city’s public art ordinance, which provides for a public art allocation equivalent to 2% of the construction cost of a new or renovated civic structure.

For more information about artist JoeSam, please visit his website: http://www.joesam.com