Mark Granlund's Public Art

Mark has been the lead artists on 28 public art projects over the last 25 years. He has created public art as an individual artist, in collaboration with other professional artists and in partnership with community members, especially teenagers and elementary school age children.

Mark has experience in all aspects of public art creation; design, community outreach, material research, installation and promotion. He has created sixteen public murals, one mosaic and twelve public installations. His media have included paint, cement, wood, tiles, soldered copper pipe, natural materials, and a variety of materials from hoses to yarn to shiny stuff.

The following are examples of some of Mark's public art.

INSTALLATIONS

The Singing Garden - Flint Hills International Children's Festival Display

This was a very fun display that Mark Granlund, Angela Koebler and Philip Blackburn created for the 2009 Flint Hills International Children's Festival. The display was made of over 30,000 plants and included giant spinning flowers and a soundtrack of plant noises.
Go to The Singing Garden

Minnesota Life!

For four years, via a partnership Mark created between Como Park Elementary School and the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, the backhall of the Como Park Conservatory was transformed annually into a environmental education oriented installation. One installation, Minnesota Life! combined native plant and animal imagery with nature facts about Minnesota flora and fauna. This installation was turned into a limited-edition book that combined images from the installation, nature facts and student's photographs and drawings.

Tornado Over Saint Paul

In 2007, Mark Granlund and Angela Koebler entered the Art In Bloom competition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This annual competition has floral artists interpreting artworks in the collection with floral displays. Art In Bloom is open to the public for five days, during which the public votes for the Best of Show and Most Whimsical entries.

Mark and Angela entered as representatives of the Blooming Saint Paul program and so chose the painting Tornado Over Saint Paul and interpreted it with a floral tornado. Their entry swept the awards.

Fern Relief Entrance

Working with fellow artist Renato Lombardi and a summer teen volunteer program, Mark Granlund created an entrance way installation to the Gallery Garden at the Como Park Conservatory. The entrance included cement impressions of ferns from the conservatory created on the walls, slates with plant drawings scratched onto them bordered the top of the installation and stones created the foundation. While creating the installation, the artists and the youth learned about fossils and prehistoric plants, like ferns.

Tree Mobile

Working with students from Como Park Elementary School, Mark created this tree-themed mobile. The central post was a cedar tree trunk with stain-glass like images of tree-parts, animals that use trees and tree derived products hanging from its branches. This mobile was housed in the Como Park Conservatory historical front entrance which provided light to pour through the hanging parts. A custom bench around the base held up the mobile while providing visitors a chance to sit and rest under the tree.

Highland Pool

This mural was painted with a Saint Paul Parks and Recreation summer youth employment program. Fifteen teens, an intern and Mark created this fishy mural at the Highland Pool. The mural is over 34 feet tall at its highest point and over 100 feet long. Mark and the youth spent weeks designing the mural and then, working on scaffolding, attached the cut-out fish and spray painted the walls. The mural brightened up an otherwise colorless environment at one of Saint Paul's most popular pools.

Como Zoo Big Cat House

Working with fellow artist Renato Lombardi and a summer teen volunteer program, Mark created two ceiling murals in the Big Cat House at the Como Park Zoo. The images were based on Mughal paintings of India, a region in which all four of Como's big cats inhabited at some point in time.

Wooden frames were created to fit around the ceiling's central light fixture and sloped down to the walls. The canvases were stretched and painted on these wooden structures and then installed at night after the zoo was closed to visitors. The mural extended down the wall and has display cases for information about the mural and the cats housed in the building.