Community comes together to complete art project at Polson's Riverside Park

Months of planning and hard work came to fruition at Riverside Park Sunday as the City of Polson and the Greater Polson Community Foundation unveiled three new mosaics on the west side of the park’s restroom.

Dozens were in attendance for the event, which highlighted the new three-piece (triptych) mosaic, which represents morning, mid-day and evening in the park.

The community artwork project at the park was the brainchild of Cameron Decker, the head of the Fine Art Department at Salish Kootenai College, and took more than eight months to complete.

“This place, this park, was really important to me as a kid when I was growing up. This is where my friends and I played all the time. I was swinging on one of the swings in the park one day and I saw this wall and I thought it would be a great place for some art,” Decker said. “It originally was going to be small mosaics and a mural, but it quickly became more about teamwork and stepping back and trusting the people who know what they are doing. I wanted to do it all, but I learned that you have to lean on the skills and expertise of others. That’s what community art is really all about.”

Decker said he started working on the project before securing funding, but trusted that he would find a way to make his dream a reality. With financial help from the Greater Polson Community Foundation, the Jarecki Foundation, the Cowan Trust and Suzanne Booker, Decker’s dream became a reality Sunday.

“I had no idea where it was going to end up. Once it got starting, it pretty much snowballed,” Decker said. “We started working on this before we had funding, thinking we would just figure it out as we went, and it all worked out. The Greater Polson Community Foundation really came through for me and believed in me.”

The concept design of the mosaic came from collaboration between Decker, Polson High School art teacher Matt Holmes and Polson High School’s drawing and design students (including Summer Johnson, Kristen Maxfield, Nate Plant, Aubrey Frissell, Kylei Big Bow and Jarius Smith).

According to Holmes, the design came about after Decker asked the students to come up with words to describe their memories of Riverside Park. After filling a board at the school with hundreds of descriptive words, the task of determining what the mosaic would look like began.

“We had to figure out how we were going to convey all of those ideas in a mural. We met and we chipped the list down and we chipped it down some more and we decided on a triptych, which is three pieces, to represent morning, afternoon and evening,” Holmes said.

With the design of the project decided, Decker, Holmes and the students began work producing the thousands of tiles that compose the three mosaics. As the project progressed, the production of tiles expanded to include help from other Polson students and members of the Boys and Girls Club and Upward Bound.

As the mosaics came together, Holmes said he wanted to add a personal touch to the project.

“I went through my daughter’s room trying to find little things that I could hide in the pieces. If you look closely at the individual pieces, you can find them,” he said. “I hope she comes here someday and sees them.”

The finished triptych’s panels begin on the left with a rendition of the park with a rising sun. The middle mosaic represents mid-day and includes a representation of a Kootenai woman, referencing a photo taken by Edward Curtis. The mosaic on the right represents the park and Flathead Lake at night on the Fourth of July with fireworks lighting up the sky.

The new mosaic sits just above a new concrete pad that was added behind the restroom area, which will soon house benches in honor of former Polson Police Officer William Cleveland, who died of cancer in 2015. Cleveland’s family was on hand Sunday to add the final piece of the mosaic, a cast of the police officer’s badge, which now sits in the middle panel of the triptych.

“It’s really special and touching to have the badge included in this project,” Cleveland’s widow, Terri, said. “I am really glad we were able to be here for this.”

Polson Mayor Heather Knutson said she is impressed by how quickly the project came together and thinks the mosaic is a great new addition to the park.

“This is truly even more incredible than what I expected. You guys have done an amazing job with this. This is such a great addition to our community. I really appreciate that,” Knutson said. “It was also impressive how quickly this project came together. To see something like this, that is a value to our community and a benefit to our community and how people came together and rallied to make it happen, it was a great experience and really great to see. This is really remarkable and should be something that people can enjoy for years to come.”