The Arts Council of Greater Lansing kicked off its annual creative placemaking summit on Monday with the dedication of a massive mosaic on the Shiawassee Street bridge over the Grand River.
The colorful mosaic adorns the bridge on the north side of Rotary Park in downtown Lansing. It’s a project that embraces the phrase “creative placemaking.” Among its thousands of tiles are 18-hundred individual tiles made by everyday citizens at workshops around the city.
Work began in 2020, but was slowed by the pandemic. Artist Alexandra Leonard says there’s still a little work to do, where the purple primer still shows.
“Those will get covered with tile within the next couple weeks,” she said. “We’re so close right now.”
Leonard also says the project has been multi-faceted, “from working with community members making their tiles, and then there’s a lot of kind of back-of-house work to do after the tiles are made, to dry them, fire them, glaze them, fire them again, get the wall primed.”
The Arts Council’s five-day summit includes workshops, panel discussions and pop-ups with artists, musicians, poets, dancers and more, ending with a celebration at UrbanBeat in Old Town on Friday.