Bonnie Brae mosaics spread
10 years strong, there are now 42 pieces of Alley Art
Almost 10 years ago, Wendy Lesko hung a mosaic of a giraffe in a tall, narrow space behind her house, facing the alley in her Bonnie Brae neighborhood.
She didn’t intend to start a movement.
“It was big and heavy,” Lesko said. “If I didn’t like it, it would be in the alley. Who cares?”
Today, the alleyways meandering throughout the curvy grid of Bonnie Brae have become a veritable outdoor art gallery for mosaic artwork created by the neighbors. There are some 42 unique pieces hanging on fences and garage walls in unlikely spaces shared with trash bins and shrubbery in alleys and seven more in surrounding neighborhoods. Subjects range from simple objects to deeply meaningful expressions of personal experiences.
And word has spread outside the neighborhood. A Denver tour guide walks the alleys with his clients, and various groups like book clubs, a hiking group and art classes have visited, all following an interactive map at bonniebrae.org.
Alley Art, as it it has come to be known, started when Lesko took a tile class from Abbas Kahjeaian, owner of Kasha Kari Art Gallery in the Santa Fe Arts District.
“I can’t draw, I can’t paint, but this is something I can do,” said Lesko. “I like working with my hands, and I want to be creative. Mosaic is easy to learn. It’s about putting shapes and patterns together to make something desirable to look at. It’s also about found objects.
That’s part of the creativity,
working with materials I have as opposed to having to find a certain thing. It I had to do that, I would never have made the first one. Once I got started, I was like a kid in a candy store … dishes, cups, glassware, seashells. I’ve gotten pieces from Habitat for Humanity and Craigslist. People are happy to dump leftover tile in my garage.”
Back in 2008, when Lesko was on a ladder working on the giraffe mosaic, neighbors Donna and Dave Mosely stopped by to see what she was doing, liked the idea and asked her to teach them the craft. Inspired by their love of Hawaii, they and several contributors created “Hawaiian Paradise.”
Alley Art was off and running.
Kathy Spuhler, a self-described “closet artist,” recently returned to Bonnie Brae, where she had previously lived. Creating her mosaic was a way of re-entering neighborhood.
“I knew right away I would do one,” she said. “It was cathartic for me; it’s my gift to the community.”
Spuhler calls her piece “Alley Angel.” Created from tile, mirrors and glass stones, it’s her rendition of a three-dimensional sculpture of an unconventional angel by artist Niki de Saint Phalle hanging in the main train station in Zurich, Switzerland. The original is one of the voluminous Nana figures that represent vivacious, liberated and self-confident women.
“It’s fun, colorful and brings out my inner child,” Spuhler said.
Another recent mosaic is “Cabrini on Clayton,” a person- work created by Dave Davia and his son Rocco (with a lot of help from Lesko) as a Mother’s Day gift to Davia’s wife, Kathleen.
Mother Cabrini was an Italian-born missionary nun can- onized by the Catholic Church in 1946. During a visit to Golden, she founded a summer camp for orphan girls. Three of those girls were great-aunts of Kathleen. The depiction of the saint features three little cheral ub heads representing the aunts embedded in the tiles. Also blended into the work are four religious medals, one of them belonging to Davia’s godmother.
Lesko charges a nominal fee to have artists come and work in her garage under her guidance. “The rules are: I’ll help you, but you have to finish it (I don’t want pieces in my garage indefinitely); the work must be public — you have to hang it in the alley; and you have to have an unveiling party, ” she said.
The highly popular unveiling parties have brought neighbors together and spread community spirit.
“Eating and drinking are a big part of this,” Lesko said with a laugh. “Everyone is really proud of their work.”