CANYON COUNTRY COMMUNITY CENTER:
TILE WALL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

The courtyard wall at the new Canyon Country Community Center has been identified as a location for public artwork and will serve as a backdrop for weddings and special events. Artist Katy Krantz, was selected by the Santa Clarita Arts Commission to create a ceramic tile wall mural.  Krantz is a Los Angeles-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice includes painting, ceramics and community-based projects. She earned her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from UC Santa Cruz. She has exhibited across the United States and abroad, showing her work at such venues as the Oakland Museum and the Richmond Art Center, as well as the City Museum of Cuernavaca, in Mexico. She has had solo shows at IKO IKO space in Los Angeles, Totokaelo in Seattle and Sunday Takeout in Brooklyn. Her work was featured in Kate Singleton’s 2016 book, “Ceramics: Contemporary Artists Working in Clay.”  She is a 2020- 2021 Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Artist-In-Residence.

Krantz’s project for the Canyon Country Community Center courtyard wall will include ceramic tiles made by community members.  Tiles will be created at three socially distanced community engagement events held in Santa Clarita’s open spaces.  At the events, Krantz will be stationed at designated locations handing out blocks of wet clay.  Community members will then be invited to take a self guided hike and encouraged to press the clay into textures encountered along the way.  Krantz will collect the clay impressions at the end of the hike and take them to her studio to fire, glaze and eventually incorporate them into the mural’s overall design. 

There are four different opportunities to participate in this community engagement program. To avoid high temperatures, events will be held from 7am-10am. These are free events. Clay is provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

- The first is May 1, 2021 at Central Park next to the Western Tiger Swallowtail & Yerba Santa Clarita Public Art Sculpture.

- The second is May 22, 2021 at Elsmere Canyon at the trailhead.

- The third is Towsley Canyon in the parking lot adjacent to the trailhead on June 5. 

- The final event is June 12 at Discovery Park in Canyon Country.

For more information about the Tile Wall Community Engagement, please visit santaclaritaarts.com, or contact Katherine Nestved at [email protected].