Garden Wall: Tessera

Tessera is a part of the Garden Wall mural series, a collaborative project in both design and implementation. This iteration is installed on the Mother of Mercy House in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed and painted by Color Me Back participants recruited directly through Mother of Mercy House. All new flower imagery was derived from community engagement on site. The types of flowers depicted were selected by participants, chosen for their personal significance, comfort, and sense of home they provide: azaleas, peonies, daisies, and the Bayahibe Roses, the national flower of the Dominican Republic. In addition, participants made collage mosaics from repurposed paintings left over from previous iterations of Garden Wall, revisiting imagery from the series in a totally new way. The mosaics, made of discarded paintings, contain markings from past participants and have often been arranged by more than one person. Developments in this participatory mural-making process significantly increased the number of collaborators on this mural.
The mural is installed on custom aluminum panels cut precisely to the dimensions of the composition. They are removable and reusable, so the mural can move with the building’s tenant and can be reconfigured into new arrangements for different spaces. The design includes realistic, stylized, abstract, and collaged imagery. All of these ways of seeing and means of expression are connected and reflect the vast array of experiences and interests of the many people who participated in making this and the other Garden Wall murals.

The Garden Wall series has been developed by Mat Tomezsko, and the Color Me Back: Same Day Work and Pay Program through Mural Arts in Kensington over several projects since 2021 to the present, including murals in three different Philadelphia neighborhoods: three in Kensington, one in Frankford, and one in Tacony.