Saturday, August 15, 2026
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Kennedy School Patio, 5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland, OR 97211
there's TONS of great mosaic art just inside the door if you pop in for a wander while waiting for other, less punctual, cyclists to gather outside
whitney
Sat, Aug 15, 2026, 3:30 PM
meet at 3:30, ride at 4
6:30 PM
End location: Laurelhurst Park
Ride length: 8-15 miles
Mosaic is an ancient artform made up of placing tiny pieces into a mortar on a surface and sealing them together to create a pleasing image. These fragments, called tesserae, can be made of tile, glass, stone, discarded shards of pottery - WHATEVER the maker has on hand. This art form lends itself well both to giant public murals and intimate, decorative arts. Production is simply a matter of laying varying colours and shapes next to each other over and over till they come to represent a pattern or a picture, a whole. As such, mosaic art lends itself beautifully to metaphor: WE are all the tiny, varied, broken pieces it takes to come together and build a COMMUNITY. Our experiences (good and bad!) are the wild, sparkling, tesserae it takes to pattern a life. When we pick up the fragmented chunks of our broken hearts and lay them next to the joys and the dramas, we curate something entirely new; everyday we are making Art simply by choosing to live. Join me on a ten-ish mile tour to appreciate some of the fanciful tile art sprinkled around Portland. We’ll also gander at some fine examples of Mosaic’s translucent cousin, Stained Glass. AND THEN join TOGETHER as we attempt to create a collaborative mosaic of our own at the end spot! This is going to work exactly as well as it can - in much the same way that the community of Portland is exactly what we make of it. For this, I have a simple, silly ask: bring along a colourful ceramic item (or glass! Or stone!). This can be a cursed piece of pottery, or that mug you broke in 2021 and never learned how to kintsugi back together… or something you found in a free pile yesterday and magpied even though you didn’t have a plan for it quite yet. I'll bring a board, some tools, cement, and a vague plan. If it works, I'll install this work at a later date at a friend's property on a bikeway, and Future You can bike by and point out to your friends how this one time, on this one ride, you made Art with a bunch of (former) strangers and you should probably do that more often…
@LadyMercer
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