Legacy landscape

Editor's note: This is the first in a summer series on local attractions In Our Own Backyard.

It’s been part of the landscape for more than 15 years.
Maybe that’s why it’s so often overlooked.
Only when it’s seen for the first time do the scale and ambition of Landscape’s Legacy hit home.
Yet here it is, one of the most remarkable pieces of public art in Indiana right in our own backyard.
As Arts Place executive director Eric Rogers recalls, the organization was in the planning stages in the late 1990s for an expansion of its facility in Portland when Rhonda Franklin, one of the dozens of Arts in the Parks teaching artists over the years, came to him with a question: Would a piece of public art be part of the project?
The answer, pretty quickly, was yes.
And Franklin was the artist with the vision to make it happen.
Working over a period of three years, Franklin and a team of artists, assistants, and students created a portrait of Jay County that spans 35 and a half feet and measures seven and a half feet tall.
More than 40 people were involved in the project, which began with images taken by Arts in the Parks participants with pinhole cameras.
“I ran a tile making class for high school students. And my friend and colleague Karen Lefkovitz ran a pinhole camera class to help gather the imagery,” Franklin recalled in an email this week.
Those images caught the essence of the region: Silos, teasel, a round barn, the Loblolly Swamp complete with cattails and dragonflies, the huge grain elevator of The Andersons and the glass factories of Dunkirk.
“The great thing was searching out these sites, talking to people that worked or were involved in all these places,” said Franklin. “I think that most folks thought we were kind of strange, but they were always friendly and helpful, sharing their knowledge of a topic.”
As a border, Franklin used a glass plate design found in The Glass Museum as her inspiration.
A ceramic artist with a master’s of fine arts from Ohio State University, Franklin envisioned a mural constructed from nearly 300 individual ceramic tiles. After a scale model was created and approved by the Arts Place building committee in 1998, hands-on work on the project really took off.
In 1999, Franklin made a full-scale drawing of the huge mural, creating a to-scale grid with each tile carefully numbered. Molds were then made for the tiles and relief images were sculpted. The tiles were then fired for the first time.
“For this we were able to hire students to work as studio assistants,” Franklin recalled. “I would demonstrate a certain technique or form that I wanted to be made … then two or three other folks would follow the example and make similar forms on the mural.”
But it wasn’t until the summer of 2000 that the tiles could be glazed and fired a second time. Volunteers working under the direction of Franklin and her assistants painted the glazes onto the tiles by hand, then they were fired in a gas kiln in the art park across the street from Arts Place.
Only then could a team of masons install the tiles on the south wall of Goodrich Hall where the mural — Landscape’s Legacy — can be seen today.
“It really was a wonderful process,” said Franklin. “So many hands touched the piece. I hope that the community remembers this and feels pride in it.”
Not surprisingly for a project of that scope, the process wasn’t without its hurdles.
“I was pregnant the first summer and dealing the morning sickness,” recalled Franklin. “And the next two summers I had a small child with me. My daughter Anna was born in the middle of the process. So that was a real challenge. … Learning the work-family balance was hard. It was also difficult that my husband could only be with us on weekends.”
In some ways, the project changed Franklin’s life. Though she had hoped for other works to be commissioned, that didn’t happen. But by working with the masons and the contractors on the job, a new interest was sparked.
“I began to take architecture classes at Cuyahoga Community College where I was, and still am, an adjunct faculty member teaching art. Those classes led to an interior design job with an architectural firm.”
Today, she’s senior interior designer for the Cleveland firm of Van Auken Akins Architects. “Actually, where I am today is a direct result of working on Landscape’s Legacy,” Franklin said.