A sweet place to sit in the D
Posted August 25, 2009 by bec_young in Justseeds Collective Projects
One of the projects I did this summer that I'm proud of was to organize the making of a tile bench to go in the new 'native perennials' section of my community garden in Detroit (see previous blog post). Children from the neighborhood made the tiles with the help of local ceramic artists Soh Suzuki and Byron Nemela. They rolled leaves from the trees around the garden into the clay and painted around them, using the leaves as both imprint and stencil. As you can see, we also put the kids to work installing the tiles. I would recommend this project to anyone with access to a kiln; the terracotta tiles must be fired at a high temperature so that they can stay outside, if you live in a climate that has a freeze and thaw cycle known as Winter. You could also buy pre-made exterior tiles and paint them. To make the bench, we poured a cement rectangle, and a couple days later built the bench using cinder blocks and mortar. We used tile adhesive to stick the tiles on and grouted around the tiles later with a mixture of silica sand, cement, and acrylic paint. Now our gardeners have a permanent place to chill!
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