Cats and Dogs: Current Project for the Fort Worth North Animal Control Center

Oct, 2022: We are making great progress on the installation! Photos below show the currently installed pieces. Next up, the 3-D, five-foot-tall blue dog sculpture, which will sit on the limestone gabion “selfie bench” in front of the Adoption Center.

This clever mural by California artist John Wehrle of Trout in Hand Studio is a focal point of the Adoption Center lobby.

Luna, Chip and Pepita welcome visitors to the facility.

It’s been more than a year since I was selected by the Fort Worth Arts Council and local stakeholders to create an art program for the new North Animal Control and Service Center Campus in Haslet, Texas. After months of design work, budgeting, prototyping and site visits, we’re almost ready for the final design contract and approval from the Arts Council.

“Ophelia” leads “The Chase,” featuring five running mosaic dogs in stainless steel frames, chasing each other across the campus.

“Savannah” is a fiberglass and Mexican smalti mosaic cat who explores the upper reaches of the Adoption Center.

Color plan for the Blue Dog Selfie Bench.

Wednesday my longtime friend and artist Albert Scherbarth and I visited the site, carrying with us a mock up of an eight-foot-tall gabion and the prototype stainless steel frame for “Pepita,” a chihuahua who would sit atop that tall gabion as an entrance marker. Here are some photos from our visit.

2021 can’t come soon enough, for so many reasons. We’re looking forward to starting our fabrication on this ambitious collection of mosaics and shelter art! Once we get final approval at the January Arts Council meeting, we’re off and running. Special thanks to Alida Labbe, Public Art Project and Capital Budget Manager for the Arts Council of Fort Worth, for her leadership and support as this fun project develops.

Five running mosaic dogs, two-sided, will mount to the retaining wall in front of the Veterinary Clinic and Administration Building.

Our selfie bench and blue dog will be in this left side grassy patch.

Public art muralist John Wehrle is creating a custom wall mural for the Animal Adoption Center lobby. The inspiration is a local prairie landscape filled whimsically with happy, jumping, floating cats and dogs. It’s a little nod to one of my favorite paintes, the Belgian artist Rene Magritte.

Mockup of “Pepita.” We’re changing out the thick stainless steel for a lighter band. The mosaic, made of Eco-Body Quarry Tile, will be flush with the surface of the stainless frame and will be repeated on the back side. Three gabions of different heights will stand as entrance markers.

“Chip” will be the mascot image, a reminder to adopters to have their pets microchipped. He’s one of the three entry gabion pets. A green cat named “Luna” is the third. Albert Scherbarth will be fabricating three gabions and a large, limestone-topped seating gabion, on which will be a six-foot-tall blue dog - a selfie station for residents and their newly-adopted pets.

A few flat mosaic cats will lounge on the I-beams, leading folks to the back room where 30 cat kennels will host felines awaiting adoption.

The cement work and railings aren’t in place yet, but we’ll have a large calico here, encouraging people to walk out to the adoption center patio and walk around the pond trail using the ramp (not pictured). Also a great place for selfies! This building also features a meeting/classroom.

A unique feature of the facility is the bioswale, a marshy, plant-filled area between each kennel building. The runoff from hosing out the kennels will be collected, cleaned naturally and siphoned into the existing pond below.

Dr. Tim Morton, the head veterinarian and director, gave us a hard hat tour. We’re looking out from the second floor of the administration and clinic building, towards the adoption center.

Luna, Chip and Pepita mark the entryway of the NACC facility.

While getting a hard hat tour of the administration and clinic building, I noticed a sublime construction moment. You don’t see many of them.

Mesquite Fire Station #4: In progress

6/13/2021 UPDATE: The mosaic is complete! We carefully packed the sections and I drove back to Dallas to lay it out on the studio floor for the first time. I’ve added signatures (John Wehle’s and mine). Now we just have to work against the heat and intense sunlight to install it on the exterior vertical wall of Station #4. Installation will take place Wednesday, June 15th - June 21. Pics to follow.

Laying out each section to test the fit. Photo by Mark Lefkin.

Limited table space in my Taos studio meant I was only able to see the result of a year’s work by bringing the mosaic to the Dallas studio. First time viewing the completed mosaic! Photo by Mark Lefkin.

It’s slow going, especially since the project is in Taos at the garage studio. Two weeks there, two weeks in Dallas. Rinse off the desert dust and repeat. We had to stop temporarily to complete a time-sensitive project in Fort Worth, but soon we’ll be back in the studio to complete the final sections. I’d say we are 75+ percent complete.

While awaiting helmet revisions on the front firefighter, I decided to finish the fire in the grass. Now, all 7 pieces across the bottom are complete. Not all would fit on the table.

We had to make an adjustment to the helmet style of the yellow front helmet. Here is the new version, whose pattern will be spliced into the existing one.

Fun with reds! I’ve started incorporating some MVM Mexican smalti into the mix, because it’s giving me some reds I don’t have in the Italian palette.

As the finished sections get taller (I’m one panel away from the full 12-foot height), it’s harder to photograph.

The sky is a wonderful mix of smoke, flames and movement.

It’s getting too large to fit on the work tables!

Tales from A Construction Site: The Boot Stitch Installation.

I’ve installed mosaics on many large commercial sites. Each one brings its own challenges and takeaways. Here are lessons from the most recent project, August 17 - 22, 2020.

1. It’s always wise to test the layout before delivery. This is the first time Enso Fabrication’s waterjet pieces of Neolith ceramic met my mosaic boot stitches. A good fit! Thanks to Jade and Nicki Synhorst and the crew at Enso for a perfect template and cuts. We used the masonite template, cut by the waterjet, to build our mosaic to a very accurate dimension.

2. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forward. Because of the thickness of the hotel entry pavers (seen here in mid-removal), the bed for my mosaic had to be a separate pour of about 5 inches of concrete. The pavers ideally should have been added after the mosaic and metal Schluter edge were installed, but because the crew was up against a Monday deadline, they filled in the custom-cut pavers around the raised bed. However, they didn’t quite meet the shape I was installing. Out they came, each carefully beveled paver and all those tricky cuts discarded. I considered them a hazard to my crew, so I gradually moved them to a stack on the street.

3. Any raised object, from a 5 gallon bucket to a pile of pavers, can become a work surface for a hurried dude with an angle grinder. I had no sooner stacked these pavers, when a guy with a strip of metal threshold needed a place to brace his cuts. I’ve always been wary of this tool, but it’s ubiquitous on a construction site. We couldn’t have done our job without it.

4. The Lipstick Trick. Remember the lessons from your mentors.

In my case, one of my earliest mosaic mentors was the award-winning ceramist and mosaic rock star Eric Rattan. In an effort to teach proper tile setting skills to the next generation of artists, Eric created “hard hat workshops,” during which he taught us invaluable trade skills - like how to measure a room for square, and how not to embarrass yourself by calling a trowel a “spatula.” Break that rule, and you were called a “fruit salad” for the duration.

One of his memorable tips was to always carry a can of hairspray and a tube of lipstick in your tool box. Fashion emergencies aside, he used the hairspray to fix a chalk line in place, and the lipstick to mark protrusions such as j boxes and these here sleeves for the recessed lights. Coat the object with lipstick, then place the intended surface against it. Viola! You have your marks as to where you should cut.

The Neolith wasn’t pre-drilled, because we weren’t sure the sleeves had been installed symmetrically. We had to create an exact template on site, with almost no tolerance for error. I ran to CVS across the street and selected the cheapest, reddest lipstick I could find. It worked! We were able to create an exact template of the two center Neolith sections, mark the 7 light sleeve locations on the vinyl, core drill them and slide the slabs right over the sleeves (with a little bit of extra grinding).

I miss our dearly departed Eric Rattan, as generous with his knowledge as with his friendship. Read all about him here.

Carefully drilling light sleeve holes through the Neolith slab. Yes, there’s that angle grinder again, this time with a 3-inch core drill bit.

Back buttering the Neolith. I held my breath until each of these fragile pieces had been set.

5. Hard hats aren’t for show. This is an accurate depiction of the final days of a project before the preliminary certificate of occupancy inspection. It’s not unlike a beehive. Power washers, angle grinders, electricians, stone masons cutting granite on site, landscapers and sprinkler installers, elevator and fire alarm testers, metal smiths who cut and install door flashing and thresholds, brick layers and, of course, tile setters and their nervous artist. It’s amazing how everyone manages to work around the other trades, and for the most part, everyone is cool and good humored. The fellow inspecting the mosaic on the upper left is the Sigma Marble supervisor, Randy Hossikis. His hat reads like a high school Varsity Quarterback’s letter jacket. Stickers from all the big jobs he’s worked.

6. Mind the Gap! Expansion joints are essential. In this case, we were able to select in advance just where it would interrupt my design. Once we install the column sculpture, not much of the expansion will show.

7. Have confidence in your crew! Sigma sent Luis Garcia, their best installer. It’s a relief to have your artwork in such capable hands. I’m super pleased that the Neolith sections actually look like burnished leather, as intended. Stay tuned for the next phase: the construction of the Pamplona Rose Polaina, a smalti-clad, 8-foot-tall ode to the Spanish origins of the Antonio Catalan hotel brand. I’m still working out the maquette (pictured in a previous post).

On the work table now:

Here’s the current long-term project, which will be installed on the façade of a local fire station. The image, designed in cooperation with and painted by Texas native and current CA resident John Wehrle, features two fire fighters, dynamically fighting the flames that rise behind the station’s logo. Here’s a sneak peek.

I love this painting, created by John Wehrle of Trout in Hand Studio.

The fire fighters’ knees, emerging from the tall grass.

We’re using vintage Italian smalti, which I purchased from a historic collection once owned by California mosaic muralist, Millard Sheets. The colors are rich and so varied. We have our choice of over 500 unique colors to create this mosaic (if we so choose!).

This is how far we’ve come after a month of diligent work. The paper-faced method means we create the pattern in reverse on heavy duty paper, then apply the tesserae with a water-soluble glue. The final mosaic will be 12 x 12 feet. We divided the pattern vertically and horizontally in a puzzle-like grid. There are 49 sections.