When Child Care Resources commissioned Sharon Sexton and Cristina Abizaid to make a mural for its new preschool, the charity couldn’t have picked two artists better able to channel their inner child.
And like a lot of the kids in the preschool, Sexton and Abizaid have a hard time being pulled away from the craft table.
The artists, both part of Tiger Lily Art Studios and Gallery, are working on a mixed-media mural packed with childhood fascinations: frogs, worms, owls, possums, dolphins and dozens of other creatures in a panoply of settings.
“This turned out to be way more involved, probably because we’re having so much fun with it,” says Abizaid. “We want to make it as good as it can be.”
Sexton, known for her tiles, pots and paintings often depicting images from natural Florida, was commissioned to create a donor wall for the new 11-classroom school in what years ago was the Doctor’s Clinic. The wall would honor some 55 donors to a capital campaign that raised more than $2 million for the facility, which opened in November.
Childcare Resources, founded in 1994, helps full-time working parents or those enrolled in school full time to get quality child care, even if they earn up to twice the poverty level.
The donor wall will hang in a hallway through which up to 115 children pass each day going to and from their classrooms.
Sexton has done such commissions before, including for Vero’s Hospice House and Temple Beth Shalom. She was also commissioned to do the mosaic tile pillars behind the interactive fountain on Royal Palm Pointe.
This time, instead of inserting her art against a backdrop of nature, the art itself would bring nature indoors.
“We wanted to make it fascinating for children,” says Abizaid. “The more you look, the more you see.”
Abizaid fingered a string of pearlescent plastic beads that, in the craft store, gave her an idea: Doubled up, they made perfect tentacles for her clay jellyfish and man-o-war.
Then she scooped a handful of narrow clay triangles and upended them along the top of a small dome. “A sea urchin,” she proclaimed, smiling to herself.
“We’re just seeing everything in old treasures, in our boxes of stuff,” says Abizaid. “Sharon and I are like this naturally.”
In her corner of the gallery’s studios, Abizaid has a series of mixed-media works in which shells figure prominently. She has worked them into her paintings as a way of adding not only realism but whimsy, as in the painting of a mermaid ringed in real-life weathered conchs.
Likewise, Sexton’s niche is filled with primitive Florida landscapes, homespun still-lifes, and functional clay works – vases, pitchers, tiles – adorned with elements from nature. A founding member of the gallery, Sexton grew up in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach. Her father had an interior decorating business and often painted murals for clients. One day he delegated to his daughter a commission for a house in Boca Raton.
“It was my first mural and it was 36 feet long,” she recalls. Not unlike the mural she is working on now, it was a scene from nature – the edge of a pond, with cattails, frogs and lily pads.
Those images are part of Sexton’s everyday life on the ranch she shares with artist and poet Sean Sexton. The couple married in 1981, and Sharon Sexton knew Vero long before that; her family, the Koerners, had a home in Summerplace while she was growing up.
Abizaid came to Vero five years ago from Maryland, having grown up in Beirut, Lebanon. When civil war broke out in 1975, her parents sent her to school in Rome. From there, she came to the states for college at Georgetown University. It was there that a drawing class piqued her interest in art. She joined Tiger Lily two years ago, and is one of six artists-owners. In addition to painting and mixed media, she has worked in fine art jewelry and stained glass.
That last skill set proved handy when a change of heart made the duo turn to glass instead of tile for a water element in the mural.
The mural is divided into thirds for convenience. As one huge board, it would weigh too much to move, loaded with clay, rocks and shells that in turn are embedded into mortar and then grouted.
Instead of a wood backing, the artists use the leak-proof, mold-proof tile backing material known as wedi board, commonly used in shower stalls. The 48-by-72-inch boards, even loaded down with mosaic pieces, are light enough to move or even ship.
Using multiple panels to create large murals may turn into a lucrative new market for the artists, who are looking to do commissions in other parts of the country.
Sexton and Abizaid work from a preliminary sketch. In this commission, that includes two large figures, a boy and a girl, romping through a backdrop that extends horizontally from day to night, and vertically from ground to sky. For the water feature at the center of the boards, Abizaid cut pieces of colored class into curving wedges, backing them with foil to make them shimmer.
It was Abizaid’s prior work in mosaic that prompted Sexton to invite her to collaborate on the mural.
“I’ve never had a partner on a big commission,” says Sexton, whose most recent project was a garden statue for Old Riomar resident Marie Stiefel, a supporter of Childcare Resources. “It’s fabulous to have somebody to bounce ideas off of. Just having a partner relieves so much stress.”
The two did the basic drawing together. From there, it’s been more a matter of curating than controlling what goes on the board. “Christina and I are very much alike in that we’re just kind of fearless in any medium we try.”
Asked when the project is supposed to be finished, the women glance at each other and wince.
“September,” Sexton admits. “But we’re way more interested in having the piece be as beautiful as it can possibly be. Obviously we have a deadline, but it’s too beautiful to rush.”
