Client: Johnson County Library at Lenexa City Center, Kansas

Overview

Interconnections, a triptych of mosaic murals, each one measuring 23.5 feet tall by 5.5 feet wide and created for the Johnson County Library at Lenexa City Center, Lenexa, Kansas, celebrates the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet through a profusion of typographic fonts, both uppercase and lowercase, intermixed with images from the artists books — Alphabet City, Alphabet School, and A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet. This artwork was made possible by a 1% grant for public art by the Johnson County Public Art Commission and the Public Building Commission of Johnson County.

Goals

Johnson says: "The goal of Interconnections is to inspire visitors to the library to view our world in a fresh and playful way, and in so doing, discover for themselves juxtapositions of scale, color harmonies, rhythms in surface textures, and joy in what may seem unremarkable or ordinary, by transcending the mundane and unearthing its hidden beauty."

Process

Franz Mayer of Munich worked directly with the artist, getting to know his working methods and visual language, to achieve a dazzling translation of his collage-like imagery. Artisans employed irregularly cut glass cake and gems combined with Italian and Mexican smalti to make a highly charged surface that delights the eye and animates it's architectural setting.