Gary Drostle

Remember when you were a child, how excited you were exploring the seashore and tide pools on the beach? This was Gary’s inspiration for this series of ten mosaic panels and floor terrazzo design. This series of mosaic panels evoke a walk along the California seashore. Here is a look at these California seashore mosaics for the main lobby of the new Stanford, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, opened in December 2017 in Palo Alto, California.

 

 

The new Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital is set to be the flagship hospital for the inclusion and integration of art in hospitals. This modern, high tech building is filled with original and inspiring art around every corner. The hospital aims to provide it’s patients, staff and visitors with an environment that is welcoming, friendly, interesting and fun. Certainly a far cry from the old utilitarian hospital design.

Using art to enhance the environment has a proven track record in healthcare provision. In fact Gary‘s very first job was painting murals in hospitals. Nowhere are these benefits felt more than in the provision of children’s health services. The new Stanford Children’s hospital is packed full of sculptures, mural panels, photographs, information panels and mosaic art. This hospital sets the standard for what art can do in the healthcare environment.

 

Arriving at a design for the California Seashore

The overall arts concept of the building was to reflect the local flora and fauna of Northern California, connected to the elevation. So that the basement represented the ocean, the ground floor represented the seashore, the first floor the forests and so on, up to the mountain tops. Working with healthcare arts consultants Aesthetics Inc, architects Perkins+Will and the client, Gary designed the ground floor terrazzo to echo the seashore. Along this seashore Gary placed ten mosaic panels. “The idea was to create the mosaic panels as discovery points across the floor, each panel containing differing flora and fauna of the California seashore that visitors could explore from one to another”.

Terrazzo: A technique of mixing coloured stones and other materials with cements that is poured wet onto the floor and then ground and polished to form a decorative surface. In this case Gary used a palette of four colours to create a seashore design.

This series of mosaic panels was one of two series completed for the new hospital: ‘A Walk along the California seashore’ for the ground floor; and ‘A trail trough the redwood forest’ for the first floor.

 

 

 

Making the mosaic

Once designed and approved all the mosaics were made in Gary‘s studio in London. Using unglazed ceramic, porcelain, and the traditional paper faced reverse technique, each tile (tesserae) carefully cut and glued, by hand, onto a full scale paper cartoon of the design.

In order to ensure that the mosaic panels matched the terrazzo floor, rigid templates were made for each panel. These were used to create the mosaic cartoon and then to fix on site before the terrazzo was poured.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arriving in California to begin the on site mosaic works

Gary and his team first arrived on site to fix the mosaic templates and template plugs for the cast glass leaves. This was done alongside the steel terrazzo bars which were set out before the terrazzo was laid. This was done to ensure a good fit for the mosaics. On the first floor steel bars were used to delineate the terrazzo colours which would form the forest path.

 

 

Installing the mosaics

Once the mosaics were complete and the terrazzo floor ready, the mosaics were packed and shipped to the site. Gary and the team then arrived to install the mosaics. The mosaics were installed into the spaces left in the terrazzo and grouted, cleaned and sealed.

 

 

The completed mosaics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming soon – the report on the first floor Redwood Forest Trail mosaics…