2 Life Communities, formerly known as JCHE, a senior housing community in Brighton, MA, was lucky enough to have a sculpture that was created with mosaic artist Lili Ann Rosenberg in 1980. The sculpture had been moved, and was damaged during the move. After 2 Life reached out to the New England Mosaic Society for help, Connection Lab led an initiative to stand half of the sculpture up in place and to transform the other half into a new interior mosaic installation that would reflect the Lili Ann’s original style and themes. In partnership with Cecilia Kremer and Shirah Rubin, and with input from Deborah Aldo and Carol Krentzman, Connection Lab salvaged sections of the original mosaic, took clay impressions of some of the design elements, and incorporated these with new materials to create a design of vines and leaves to decorate the new entryway to the building.
The project was designed to be done collaboratively with 2Life residents, but COVID made it impossible to gather safely for group activities, so we delayed the collaborative elements of the project. We hope to work with 2Life again once COVID has passed to create a participatory mosaic.
Here’s a sign that includes photos of the original mosaic and tells the story of the restoration:
We built each leaf individually, setting ceramic, glass and metal elements into thinset. After trying a variety of arrangements we settled on the final vines.
