Mosaic Project Will Decorate Northampton's Library

Kids, parents and grandparents alike have gotten their hands dirty in the past few weeks to create tiles for a new mosaic project which will decorate the children's section of the .

After the tiles are completed, they will go to Artist in Residence Director Terri Herring's studio and they'll be glazed, dried and fired. The artists will return to the library, sketch the murals on the wall and assemble them with the community's tiles and some of their own. 

The tiles cost $20 each for were $50 for three, and the library has already held two work sessions with Artists in Residence present to help them properly assemble their works of art. 

The project allows members of the community to be a part of a lasting piece of art that they will be able to visit and appreciate for many years to come, Children's Librarian Christy Lazzarino said.

Lazzarino said she hopes the projects will be ready to reveal to the community sometime this summer.

A group of local 4-H students went to the work session together last weekend and some made tiles representing their favorite books.

Derrick Lukomski-Pizzo, 8 years old from Newtown, and Alexandria Kazandjian, 11 years old from Warrington, decorated their tiles with characters from "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and "Percy Jackson and the Olympians."

"I like making stuff at school," Kazandjian said.

Lukomski-Pizzo said last year they made pottery in school so he already had a little experience working with clay.

AIR is a non-profit that began in the area in 1998 whose mission is to bring artists into schools to expose children to a variety of different types of art, Herring said.

"We just try to really enrich children's lives," Herring said. 

Their funding comes mostly from schools' parent organizations, and is sometimes funded by the school district or AIR grants, she said.