A Design Garden

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December 7, 2006

Tile making is the grout that binds artist/volunteers to costal rail trail arches project

By Lee Schoenbart ~ Carmel Valley News/Del Mar Village Voice

By now, most locals are familiar with many of the community art projects championed by Betsy Schulz and her legion of artist/volunteers.

From the tile mosaic wall in front of the Del Mar branch library to the coastal rail trail arches at Via de la Valle along the Del Mar Solana Beach border, Schulz has enlisted the aid of local artist/volunteers such as Irene de Watteville.

Many of these volunteers, including de Watteville, assist Schulz with a wide range of tasks from creating the actual tiles to mixing cement and steadying ladders.

De Watteville said it's all in a day's work for a labor of love.

"Betsy is one of the most amazing young artists I know. She adores the volunteers, and we have so much fun when we work together because we go so excited about the little pieces we're putting in. There's a sense of team; it's fabulous," said de Watteville, who carne to Solana Beach 33 years ago from her native province of Alsace- Lorraine in France.

"It's hard work," admitted de Watteville, "mixing cement, you' get cement under your nails. Your hands get chapped and you could fall off the ladder. But it's not really dangerous, it's exciting."

Tile making is the grout that binds the artist/volunteers to Schulz's coastal rail trail arches project And' tile making, which dates back more than 3,000 years according to de Watteville, is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

"I'm on the board of the Tl1e Heritage Foundation which is a national organization. They promote contemporary tile makers and preserve old tile installations," she said.

"The tile community is a very friendly community. We all work together. We all have disasters with our kilns, our clay, our glaze and we share a lot."

About her designs and style de Watteville said, "I do very classical, Old Dutch designs and I'm starting to do relief. I've done quite a few lectures on contemporary tile making."

She said the art of tile making is "an amazingly alive, fabulous medium in the United States. From mosaic to architectural to ceramic, it's the same technique that wasused 3,000 years ago. The only difference is we have electric kilns and we can't use lead, which, unfortunately, the colors aren't quite as nice without the lead."

De Watteville said she learned to create tiles "little by little. I started by buying commercial bisque tiles and then I started making my own tiles. I am always experimenting with glazes."

But she does not have a fondness for the modem era's 6-inch by 6-inch commercial tiles.

"I like best the five by five, which is what the Portuguese do because you can hold it between your pinkie and your thumb," she said with a laugh.

Although they had yet to meet each other, de Watteville had a hand in what would become Schulz's arches project before it came to fruition.

"I was the chair of the (city of Solana Beach) art committee, and we, the group of citizens, totally changed the design of the coastal rail trail," she recalled.

"When the design was being refined, the designer said here's the sign we're going to put in at the entrance to Via de la Valle. It's going to be a block a cement with Solana Beach written in indented letters. We'll have a little blue mosaic at the bottom and a little sunshine in metal in yellow and orange ... And l said, and it's $30,000?' I think we can do better than that, right?" she said with a hardy laugh.

"Thank God, City Councilman David Powell (who is now serving as mayor) said let's give a chance to the art committee and the designer/landscape architect of the coastal rail trail Glen Schmidt," de Watteville said.

"We gave him a bunch of names of people that we thought had potential. I recommended Betsy because I had seen her work. The committee unanimously chose Betsy's project, so that's how it all started.

"Betsy is an extremely organized person and very thorough," she said.

"Also her strength is in graphic design. The girl goes full blast and she also worked very hard with all the local people."

The best place for budding tile makers to begin, de Watteville said, is by purchasing Frank Georgini's book "Handmade Tiles."

"It's kind of a bible, and there are classes everywhere," she said.

The process, she said, is really quite simple, and perhaps the only major expense would be purchasing a kiln.

"To learn to make tiles, you need equipment at some point you need a kiln or you can go and have things fired, but that's basically all you need.

"You can roll out your clay with a rolling pin. Then you have to buy some different glazes, and in a kiln and that's it.

However, de Watteville cautioned, "it's kind of expensive to have somebody fire them for you, (but) perhaps you can find a friend to fire them for you in exchange for a bottle of wine."

Spoken like a true French artiste.

To learn more about the foundation, visit www.tileheritage.org or e-mail foundation@tileheritage.org

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