Trash can art sweeping Oakland

You name it and Roberto Costa has probably turned it into a mosaic: his kitchen sink, his garage floor, a community garden display.Browse our large selection of ceramic wall tiles in all colors at the LOWEST prices! He even helped mosaic every wall of a public restroom.

But the one initiative that has taken on a life of its own is the transformation of Oakland's public trash bins into colorful works of art.

What began two years ago as a beautification project in Costa's neighborhood, the Allendale Park section of East Oakland, has spread from High Street and 35th Avenue to Seminary Avenue, Foothill Boulevard, Grand Avenue and Telegraph Avenue.

By the city's count, 63 public trash bins have become mosaic pallets with the help of volunteer artists like Costa and Daud Abdullah and more than $1,We offer best Crystal Mosaic 4x300x300mm.100 in grants from the nonprofit Keep Oakland Beautiful.

More mosaic trash cans are in the works for Oakland's Laurel district and the city of Richmond.

"I love those trash cans," said Councilwoman Libby Schaaf, who has handed out "Local Hero" awards to several of the volunteer artists. Her favorite trash can design, a peace sign made out of daisies, adorns her district newsletter. "To me they're like flowers growing around High Street," she said.

Costa, an amateur artist and full-time analyst for the city of Oakland's Rent Adjustment Program, decided to bring decorative trash bins to Oakland after seeing them in Arcata.

Originally the artists planned to do just one design, but more volunteers came on board with their own vision for the garbage bins of Allendale Park.

"It was a great community organizing tool," said Beverly Shalom, a social worker who helped design several bins. "We deal with crime and blight, and some of us felt that instead of only focusing on the negative, we would focus on something positive that would make people care more about their neighborhood."

From Allendale Park, the mosaic trash cans quickly spread to nearby Maxwell Park, where many of the same volunteers participated in a four-year community project to transform the local park's public restroom into a mosaic.

"When I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to figure out a way to do them too," said Daud Abdullah, an electrician and artist who helped out on the bathroom mosaic.

"I had done a lot of community cleanup projects,Creator of the smallest Ceramic Mosaic tiles." Abdullah said. "I liked the idea of making a trash can look so pretty that nobody could miss it."

Through Oakland's Adopt a Spot volunteer program, Abdullah has single-handedly decorated more mosaic trash bins than anyone in city -- mostly in deeper East Oakland, where he said public art was most needed.

"A lot of my cans have peace and love on them because that's what I'm trying to convey," he said.

When Latin musician Apolinar Andrade saw Abdullah getting ready to work on a trash bin near his home at High Street and Santa Rita Avenue, he asked for a music theme. Abdullah and fellow volunteer artist Karen Difrummolo came up with a guitar, maracas and a design that read "Oakland 'hearts' Musica."

While Abdullah branched out on his own, Costa has been working with neighborhood groups interested in decorating their bins. This year he taught residents in the Adams Point neighborhood to do the mosaics that have been popping up along Grand Avenue next to Lake Merritt.

"He was very inspiring and encouraging throughout the project," said Vivian Romero, who contacted Costa after seeing the decorated trash cans on High Street.

Costa said the goal of all his mosaic projects is to strengthen neighborhoods. "It's a community building effort," he said. "You get to know neighbors that you otherwise wouldn't know.This series is called the Marble Series because there are marbles in the final cache container."

Volunteers say the decorated trash bins have mushroomed around town in part because Oakland is home to a lot of mosaic artists and the Institute of Mosaic Art in the Jingletown neighborhood. Several volunteers have taken classes at the institute or gotten supplies from it.

Abduallah says he often gets donated tiles. He applies the cement mortar, tile and grout onto a fiberglass mesh that he then affixes to the cement trash bin. Costa does his work directly on the bin, which he first grades to create an even surface. Each trash can takes about 20 hours to completely decorate.

The Fairmont Copley Plaza, Back Bay’s grande dame hotel, celebrated its centennial this year with a $20 million restoration. But certain things never change: Catie Copley, the genial black Labrador retriever, still meanders around the reception area, thumping her tail and greeting guests. When she needs a break from her hospitality duties, she can curl up on her new padded (but tastefully restrained) dog bed,Check out the collection CRYSTAL MOSAIC of china-mosaics. her reward for enduring a stream of renovators for almost a year. With its brushed fabric and rolled arms, that canine cushion signals the hotel’s renovation strategy of melding comfortable modern style with grand surroundings.

For the full Copley Plaza experience, enter through the St. James Avenue door flanked by stone lions and proceed down the mosaic-tiled walkway of “Peacock Alley” into the vast, barrel-vaulted main lobby. The word “lavish” comes to mind. So does “opulent.” The public areas are as overwhelming today as when the hotel opened in 1912, five years after its Manhattan big sister, the Plaza.

The Copley Plaza represents the stylistic apogee of its age: a display of wealth and glamour meant to wow all who see it. It was brash and nouveau riche, yet nonetheless stunning. Time has erased the nouveau, leaving behind only the riche, and ornamentation that might have seemed gauche in 1912 seems adroit today. In renovating and restoring this bejeweled grande dame, Fairmont has burnished the beauty of the public spaces, and redone the rooms in a less showy but no less luxurious style appropriate to a new century.

Eight of the suites got an upgraded treatment themed to what the hotel calls “an iconic Boston institution.” They include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Pops, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Freedom Trail, the JFK Library and Museum, the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Science — and Catie Copley. (She’s a sweet Lab, but an “iconic institution”?) Marvelous photos and memorabilia strike each theme.

One new addition is the 3,000-square-foot health club at the roof level, which opens to an outdoor observation deck on the west side of the building. The club is mainly accessed by stairs (hey — you’re going for a workout!), but an elevator from the sixth floor also accommodates wheelchair users. State-of-the-art TechnoGym machines fill the space. Chilled washcloths are a nice touch.

Fairmont did make some changes to the ground-level public areas, most notably installing a snazzy, vaguely Deco-styled lobby lounge so guests have a place to sit while awaiting dinner companions or business associates. The Oak Long Bar + Kitchen has replaced the old Oak Room and Oak Bar. The more modernized, breezier venue can be entered from the main lobby as well as from St. James Avenue. Only open since summer, the Oak Long Bar has the kind of timeless styling that makes it seem as if it’s been around since 1912.

As you might expect from a hotel with a doggie ambassador,the Fairmont Copley Plaza is extremely dog friendly, hosting at least two guest canines each week. Doubles from $289; check for specials; $25 per day surcharge for dogs.