"Around the corner, a piece of Beltline art- Works entice, provoke curiosity"
AJC Article about the Atlanta Belt Line by By Eileen Drennen
Fred Yalouris, the Atlanta Beltline’s design director, knew it could help draw locals to see the first leg of the city’s coolest new pathway for themselves. Especially if it was hosting the largest public art exhibition in town.
“Art on the Beltline” wasn’t seen as a way to fill a combined 8-mile stretch with the city’s biggest names. Yalouris wanted a wide-ranging show, including “the huge fringe of beginning artists, many still in college,” and innovative collaborations from all over...
“Beltline Takes Flight,” by Katie Hall
Hall, 29, got started in mosaics in middle school, when she discovered that gluing tiles to her bedroom furniture was an inexpensive way to make sculptures.After getting her bachelor’s of fine arts degree from Georgia State University in ceramics, she started her own custom-tile business.News of the Beltline show got her dreaming of possibilities. One of the first ideas she had was of how a neglected old train tunnel could be reborn with mosaics. She imagined transforming it with tiny bits of colored glass the way Antoni Gaudi remade so much of Barcelona. With that in mind, she began sketching out designs on “40 million napkins.”
On her second tour of possible sites, Hall found the tunnel of her dreams. A tiny railroad underpass below Lucille Street in the Westview neighborhood, with its “reverse teardrop shape,” was the one she bid for and won.
“I felt sort of amazed it worked out,” she said on a recent tour of her installation. Wild organic shapes, pieced together from bits of stained glass, stretch up the side of the bridge toward the street, punctuated here and there by birds in flight. With its deep greens and blues, and built-in sense of motion, the mosaic adds a dreamy beauty to a lush expanse of green weeds.
Aside from clearing out the trash and weeds that blocked access to the site — and pressure-washing the surface so the tiles could stick — Hall said the hardest part of the project was putting down her tools.
“I would love to do the entire bridge,” she said. “I did not want to stop. In my mind, the whole thing is done. I would like to do more or even finish, go all the way up to the top.” View Images
Read More: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/around-the-corner-a-573144.htm
