‘Family Ties’ mosaic goes up at Oklahoma City senior wellness center – Oklahoman.com
Gay Lee Abarr smiled as she pointed out the round scrap of plaid fabric encased in resin, a piece of her grandmother’s dress forever memorialized in a mosaic mural she helped piece together.
Abarr is one of several senior adults who helped local artist Nick Bayer create the “Family Ties” mosaic now brightening the community room at the Pete White Health and Wellness Center, 4021 S Walker Ave.
“She made that dress in the 1950s and she wore it until she died,” Abarr said. “Here, it’ll be remembered.”
The mural — which took almost a year to complete — features a tree, several animal families, and rolling green hills in the background. The “leaves” are made up of the round fabric resin pieces donated by members, while the tree, animals and grass along the bottom are made of painted ceramic tiles fired in the center’s own kiln.
Bayer said he got the idea for using fabric from a blanket his own grandmother made for him.
“Every time I see that blanket I think of her,” Bayer said. “So what I wanted to do was create an artwork that focused on … the idea of a piece of fabric, and how it can have that family connection within it, and the memory of a person. But also, it can represent culture, and it can represent individuality and personality.”
‘A place to come to’
Work on the mural started last September — funded by the center’s arts budget — and came just after Laura Kent started her new position as art coordinator.
The Pete White Health and Wellness Center opened in Capitol Hill in 2018 and was a MAPS 3 project, a $777 million improvements program approved by citizens in 2009. MAPS 3 provided $55.5 million for four senior health and wellness centers, the third and fourth of which are still under construction.
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Catered to those 50 and over, the center provides a variety of programs including fitness, cooking, computer classes, as well as a clinic and cafe. The mural essentially boosted the center’s arts program, which had been dormant before Kent arrived, she said.
“A lot of members say, ‘This is the first time in my life I’ve got a chance to … actually try something out,'” Kent said. “They’ve spent all their life working, sometimes working multiple jobs, to make it work. … (Now) some of them are having this opportunity just to see what’s inside of them. I think that’s something special.”
Bayer said he’s noticed a lot of the members have a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding trying something new and using their creative side, like Fleming when she first heard about the mosaic.
It’s important that the city values having an art space in their senior wellness centers, Bayer said, so that those fears can be worked through and members can learn new ways to express themselves.
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Loretta Fleming, who said a year ago she had no idea what she was doing when it came to making ceramics, now has several pieces in the kiln room that she is working on for holiday gifts.
In addition to the kiln and working with ceramics, there are always new projects and classes for members to try, Kent said.
“It’s mostly about connection and about community more than anything,” Kent said. “It’s not necessarily product driven, it’s more about coming to the space, interacting with each other and having a place to come to.”
‘It’s something special that we did’
When Fleming first heard about the mural, she did not think it was for her.
She’d never done much of anything artistic, but one day Fleming decided to peek into the art room where Bayer and the center’s art coordinator Laura Kent were working.
“I was scared to go in there,” Fleming said. “Finally about two weeks after they (started), I went back there, and Nick and Laura said ‘Come on in, Loretta.'”
Fleming — whose green floral dress and a dark tie of her husband’s are included in the mosaic — worked on the project alongside Abarr, Gloria Robles and Tony Salamanca under Bayer’s leadership for the last year.
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From cutting the fabric circles to painting tiles for many of the animals and even to painting tiny round dots that would fill in holes in the mosaic, there was always something to do, Robles said.
“And Nick would always say, ‘There’s nothing hard to do,'” Robles said. “And it wasn’t hard, but when we all saw come together, piece to piece, it was like ‘Wow.'”
In the yellow areas of the mosaic are some circles of bright yellow fabric with little white chickens, bought by Robles to represent her mother who raised chickens. Now that the project is complete, she said part of her is sad to not be in the art room with Bayer and the others.
While they will miss working on the project, it’s a source of joy to look at the completed work and know they had a hand in it.
“It’s beautiful, it’s something special that we did,” Fleming said.