By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
When Pat Limes visits the Wood County Senior Center in the future, she’ll be able to show her grandkids the corn she planted. The yellow ears will remain ripe and ready for the picking year round.
Limes and other seniors surrounded a long table Wednesday morning and sorted through colorful glass pieces to build blue skies, grow green stalks and cultivate yellow corn. This was their opportunity to create part of the mosaic tile project that will adorn the dining room windows in the senior center in Bowling Green.
“This is cut and paste – like kindergarten,” Limes said.
Like most of the amateur artists in the room, this was her first foray into mosaic work.
“I’m lifelong Wood County,” she said, explaining her desire to be part of the project. “Art can touch everyone.”
Sitting across from Limes was Judy Turner, who was piecing together another ear of corn.
“Being able to be part of this is such a wonderful opportunity,” Turner said.
The mosaic will be installed in the south windows of the dining room, where sun will be able to filter through. Local artist Gail Christofferson, of Animal House Glass, designed the project to depict the four seasons, plus pay tribute to Wood County’s corn crops in the center panel.
On Wednesday, Christofferson watched as her senior citizen students put pieces of glass on the panels.
“They’re doing great,” she said. “I bring it prepared, so people can be successful. It’s kind of like a paint by numbers when I bring it to a community event.”
While stained glass is held together by soldering, glass mosaics are glued onto panels and grouted together – work that Christofferson does once the volunteer artists have positioned the glass.
Christofferson admitted that when communities come together to build her mosaics, she sometimes goes back and fixes places that don’t meet her standards. But in some cases, the flaws are all part of the project.
“People are really excited when they get to do it,” she said. “It’s very therapeutic.”
Christofferson just completed a mosaic in New Mexico, where community members joined in. Though there were definite imperfections, the finished product was perfect, she said.
“The process is the community. The process was perfect,” she said. “Is the process the same as I would have done – no. I’m a professional.”
Christofferson’s work can be seen all over Bowling Green and beyond. Her first mosaic was created for the Otsego consolidated school building. Since then she has made mosaics for the Bowling Green Community Center, Simpson Garden Park, and Mileti Center at BGSU.
Her mosaics also adorn airports, malls, libraries and corporations from Oregon and New Mexico, to Tennessee and Virginia.
“I would consider myself a national artist now,” Christofferson said, as she glanced occasionally at the mosaic making process underway.
The Wood County Senior Center mosaic portrays springtime irises, cornflowers and daffodils, while the summer panels sprout fields of corn and sunflowers. The fall panel shows leaves turned yellow, orange and red, and the winter panel sprinkles some snow and holly.
Betty Winslow and Kathy Baker were piecing together a spring scene with colorful blooms.
“I’ve never done this before, but it looked like fun,” Winslow said.
“I thought I was going to have to paint – but this is much more fun,” Baker said.
Christofferson is taking the panels to each of the eight senior centers in the county so all have an opportunity to be involved. Earlier this week, she was at satellite centers in Grand Rapids and Walbridge. Next week, she will take the art on the road to centers in North Baltimore, Pemberville, Wayne and Rossford.
The goal is to have as many older adults as possible place several glass tiles in the frames to create the final product to be permanently displaced at the Wood County Committee on Aging, 140 S. Grove St., Bowling Green.
The Wood County Committee on Aging’s Foundation Board funded the mosaic project.
“We thought it would add a lot of interest in the dining room,” said Nadine Edwards, a member of the foundation.
On Wednesday, she and her husband, Dick, pulled chairs up to the table to add pieces to the mosaic.
“So we can sit in the dining room and say, ‘I did that,’” Nadine Edwards said with a smile.
