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Photo by Andy Atkinson Bonnie Bayard, left, and Fred Gant work on coloring a concrete molding of a sun that will be placed in Bear Creek Park. Lilli Ann and Marvin Rosenberg, background, opened their studio to the volunteers and shared their experience with concrete art. When concrete turns to art Gardeners start decorative walk for Medford park By BILL KETTLER Whatever the weather, Fred Gant will see a little sun whenever he visits Bear Creek Park. Gant spent Sunday fashioning a concrete Sol that will soon find a home in Medford's popular eastside park. Volunteers will show how it's done Volunteers from the Compost Demonstration Site will demonstrate "concrete art" at the Bear Creek Park pavilion one Sunday a month from April through August. They will make and decorate concrete and clay paving blocks for the Bear Creek Park walkway and demonstrate how to use ordinary concrete as an art medium. The workshops have been scheduled from 11 a.m to 3 p.m. on: April 18 May 23 June 13 July 18 Aug. 8 The Medford contractor made a mold from clay and filled it with concrete. Then he dyed the concrete a sunny yellow and pressed chips of bright orange and yellow glass into the wet mud. While Gant worked, half a dozen other volunteers made their own decorations for a new pathway at the park's compost demonstration site. They inscribed clay slabs with recycling messages like "Think Before you Dump" and "Compost Happens" by pressing blocks of type into the damp clay. Two Applegate Valley artists, Marvin and Lilli Ann Rosenberg, provided encouragement, advice and studio space for Gant and his friends. The Rosenbergs are working with the compost demonstration site volunteers under a $5,200 grant from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to encourage recycling. The compost-site volunteers won the grant by proposing to decorate the adjacent walkways with paving blocks like Gant's sun. Some blocks will be concrete; others will be clay. The concrete pavers will be decorated with found objects that have unusual shapes or surface textures. The clay pavers will feature recycling messages. All the blocks will be set into ordinary slabs of concrete walkway later this summer. "We said we would promote recycling in an artistically pleasing manner," said Teresa Matteson, a compost-site volunteer who wrote the grant for the city of Medford. The new walkway also will help the park comply with the wheelchair-access requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Matteson said the Rosenbergs' experience in concrete-and-ceramic art made them a natural choice for the project because the medium easily incorporates found objects. The composting site was created by the PACT recycling group, and designers wanted to incorporate "junk" in the decorations. "We asked ourselves, `What can we do that will be fun and show how we can recycle materials?"' said Bonnie Bayard, a landscape architect who also volunteers her time at the demonstration site. "We're trying to raise consciousness about resource use," she said. "We're trying to take things that are castoffs and have fun with them." The Rosenbergs have transformed concrete, clay and found objects into art for decades. Their work decorates public spaces such as the Boston subway and the threshold of C K Tiffin's restaurant in downtown Medford. They also teach others their techniques. They have worked with students to decorate schools and with inmates to decorate public areas in a state prison in Pendleton. In 1998 they helped Central Point children decorate the entrance to a new Oregon State Police office on Highway 99. Matteson said the Rosenbergs will receive $600 for their role in the project. Most of the balance of the grant will go for concrete, clay and other materials. Matteson said the Rosenbergs' style of art has a durability that makes it particularly suitable for Bear Creek Park, where vandals often strike. The compost site and an adjacent herb garden were damaged in December 1998, when vandals also attacked park trees, restrooms, and lighting fixtures. Concrete art isn't indestructible, but it's far more vandal resistant than many other kinds of art, said Mattenson. "We worry about vandalism," she said. "But that isn't going to keep us from doing things. Even though we've been whammed we're not going to let that discourage us." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA