What is Fused Together?
Fused Together brings together two organizations, Communities for a Healthy Bay and Hilltop Artists, to engage the public in environmental advocacy and glass art facilitated by artist Kait Rhoads. This program is offered for free at Tacoma Public Libraries thanks to funding by Tacoma Creates. Together with you, we are creating public art that will be installed across Tacoma to celebrate marine life and help raise awareness about the impacts of pollution.
Learn about local marine life and preserving the waters of the Puget Sound, while creating your own fused glass tile and contributing to a collaborative art project in a family-friendly activity suitable for ages 8 and older. Visit our events page to see a full list of upcoming Fused Together workshops.
LIBRARY INSTALLATIONS
Glass tiles from the Fused Together workshops are cold-worked at Hilltop Artists before being fabricated by artist Dick Weiss. Installations are on view at the Tacoma Public Library’s Moore branch and South Tacoma branch.
-
- Close up of Fused Together installation at South Tacoma library.
-
- Side by side of Fused Together installations at Moore and South Tacoma library branches.
-
- Close up of Fused Together installation at Moore library branch.
-
- Fused Together window installation at Moore Library.
Fused Together is looking forward to 2024, when images of these windows are to be turned into utility box wraps, and installed on two water quality testing utility boxes in Tacoma – thanks to the Tacoma Environmental Services and City Of Tacoma Arts & Cultural Vitality Division.
ABOUT COMMUNITIES FOR A HEALTHY BAY
Communities for a Healthy Bay engages people to clean up, restore and protect Commencement Bay, its surrounding waters and natural habitat.
For over 30 years, Communities for a Healthy Bay has brought people together to achieve a clean and healthy Commencement Bay that benefits both our community and the surrounding ecosystem that calls Puget Sound home.
ABOUT ARTIST KAIT RHOADS
Kait Rhoads is a Seattle glass and fiber artist who works with public art as a tool to create awareness around ocean/water ecology. She is honored to take part in Fused Together, an opportunity to invest in Tacoma’s community connection to art and the Salish Sea.
Kait is the lead artist of Fused Together; she facilitates the creation of the individual tiles of glass with the community and organizes their journey to finished public artwork. On this journey is another Seattle artist, Dick Weiss, who turns the glass tiles into beautiful stained glass works of art that will be displayed in Tacoma Libraries. Images of the stained-glass windows will be used as a wrap for a few of City of Tacoma’s water quality testing utility boxes, upcoming in 2024.
WORKSHOPS & MORE
Want to find more ways to get involved in a Fused Together workshop? Visit our events calendar page to see a full schedule of all of our upcoming workshops.
Communities for a Healthy Bay also has an impactful Stormwater Bingo activity for families to complete on your own or with family while walking around town.
