Chris Collins
Tou Lor (left) and Yim Laj Yang work on the mural designed by Lor while Marcia Yapp offers guidance.
In a small room on the second floor of the Bayview Community Center, Yim Laj Yang and Tou Lor are sorting through plastic tubs filled with colored tiles.
Yang, who graduated from West High School in June, reaches for a skinny rectangular piece of dark blue tile from an aluminum pie tin. “I’m working on putting together the background right now,” he says. Shelves lining two walls of the room contain plastic tubs full of tile pieces labeled with shades of blues and greens like starlight, mist, midnight, spring green and everglade.
Taped to another wall are two drawings, one in color and one in pencil, both outlines of wings with several images drawn inside. It’s the final design for the mosaic mural that Yang and Lor are working on.
Slated for a large brick wall near the entrance of the community center, the mural is just one piece of a larger placemaking initiative at Bayview, says Alexis London, executive director of the Bayview Foundation. The foundation, which includes the community center and 102 units of affordable housing, is located near downtown Madison and is home to 277 residents from 12 different countries, the majority of whom are from Southeast Asia. London says the goal of the initiative is to have more spaces for people to connect. “And we want to increase pride in the neighborhood.”
While Yang and Lor work on the final panel of the mural, teaching artist Marcia Yapp, the project’s facilitator, hovers nearby, wearing a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on her thumb — “I sliced it open while cutting a piece of tile,” Yapp says. Leaning against the doorjamb, Yapp shares that she has been doing mosaic public art for 12 years. She stops mid-sentence to show Yang how to leave a small gap between the tile pieces. “The grout will fill it in,” Yapp says.
Made up of 16 plywood panels mounted on cement board, the mural is set to be installed in mid-September. The process started a year ago with more than 100 Bayview community members participating in group sessions where they offered input on what they thought the mural should include.
A committee then settled on a design concept that embodies Bayview’s international and intergenerational community, which includes refugees. The mural is in the shape of a pair of wings, representing transformation, migration and journey.
Yapp and London then asked Lor, who also graduated from West High School in June and has lived at Bayview for 10 years, to draw the final design. “I took the ideas and a bunch of stuff that we do together, like kids getting help with homework and gardening,” Lor says. Part of Lor’s design shows a pair of eyes that represent protection. “We look out for each other.”
“Tou captured everything so beautifully,” Yapp says. “He did an amazing job of synthesizing all the ideas.”
After the design was finished, Yapp taught community members how to cut tiles and construct the mural. “I set it up like a paint by number,” Yapp says. About 70 people helped assemble it.
Amelia Corea, a mother of two young girls who has lived at Bayview for 16 years, regularly helped out. “This is something to put on the wall that will stay for a long time,” Corea says with a smile.
Lor and Madison artist Amy Mietzel are also working on a painted mural for an outdoor staircase. Bayview has also gotten new landscaping and a new playground within the last year. “Talk about transformation,” Yapp says. A pizza party celebration of the mural and other projects will be held Sept. 22 from noon to 2 p.m. and is open to the public.
Mosaic: Any image made up of pieces
Year Bayview opened as an affordable housing development: 1971
Size of the mural: 150 square feet
Number of tile pieces used: About 15,000
Height of each wing in mural: 19 feet
Width of wings: 18 feet, tip to tip
