summer job

This is the "before" picture, the change will be total before summer is over, in the remade park space in the Gothenburg neighborhood Hammarkullen.

I am into the second week of summer job, along with five young people and a painter in Hammarkullen. We form a little Mosaic Factory for four weeks. In this park there will be a stage platform, and our mosaic work will be put on the side of it.

The people I work with are so energetic, positive and quick to learn, I have problems keeping up.

As an interesting coincidence, exactly a year ago I met another artist, Frida Yngström, while she was working with a commission for the underground tram station in Hammarkullen. Frida Y. made drawings of people, directly on the wall and stayed in one of the Konstepidemin guest studios. At that time Corinne Peterson from Chicago came to visit Sweden, and showed me photos of quite a few commissions she had made, some of them in collaboration with kids.

Somehow it feels like things are coming together. Chicago, where I did a guest appearance lots of years ago, in a Gallery 37 work shop, with Göteborg where I work with teenagers again. This is the first time I make a whole mosaic piece with young people. It's challenging in so many ways, hard work and a lot of fun.

One of the Hammarkullen tram station art works is a painting by Frida Oliv.