New Wildlife Mosaic Unveiled at Sugar Sand Park
Glistening in the sunlight, a new mosaic made up of 217,000 half-inch tiles is the newest addition to Boca Raton’s growing public art scene.
Located by the family pavilion at Sugar Sand Park, the large-scale mosaic showcases the native flora and fauna of South Florida—and is the first mosaic at a district-owned park.
“The city has made a real commitment to public art,” Boca Raton Councilman Marc Widger said during an unveiling on Friday. “It should be used to tell our story, appreciate our history, celebrate our diversity, and highlight our beautiful green spaces and dazzling blue oceans.”
The mosaic was conceptualized from watercolor paintings by artist James Prosek, whose work has been on display everywhere from the Norton Museum of Art to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Royal Academy of Arts in London, The Yale Center for British Art, The Asia Society Hong Kong Center and more. Prosek is known for marrying his love of conservation with his art, and after selecting watercolors of South Florida’s native wildlife, Boston-based Artaic used its proprietary Tylist software to translate the painted works into the many different colored tiles to make the mosaic, which they also installed last week.
Veronica Hatch, public art coordinator with the City of Boca Raton, called the process a “fusion of tradition and technology.”
Now, what was an assuming wall is filled with imagery of alligators, sea turtles, spoonbill, mangroves, sea grapes, hammerhead sharks, and in the distance, a fishing boat. In a crest over the piece, the lunar cycle represents the tidal cycle, a passage of time day in and day out.
“I grew up in love with birds and fish,” Prosek says, which led him to spend time in South Florida’s waterways, particularly the Loxahatchee River.
When he was approached by the city, he gathered watercolors he had painted over the last 20 years of South Florida’s flora and fauna into a single composition. He also added color, as his work is typically black-and-white silhouettes. It wasn’t until the unveiling that the Connecticut-based artist saw it all come together.
“It’s beautiful, I’m still processing it. The scale for me is the most impactful at first,” he said. “I think, especially [for] kids, it would be fun to go close and then look at the individual colors of the tiles and then pull farther away and sort of the different creatures materialize.”
The mosaic is a permanent artwork that can be enjoyed at Sugar Sand Park in Boca Raton.
